My client was a council tenant and had been so for 7 or 8 years. In 1998 he exercisied his Right to Buy. However, he had no means of his own by which to purchase the property. He also had a heroin addiction and large debts associated with this.

A 'friend' agreed to provide the money for the purchase on certain conditions (see below).

Under the Right to Buy the status discount meant that the purchase price of the property in 1998 was £24,000.00. The money was thus provided by the 'friend' and the purchase took place formally through solicitors.

Under the Right to Buy the property could not be sold within the first 3 years of purcahse else some or all of the discount would be recoverable.

Although the title deeds remained in my client's name the conditions placed upon him effectively meant that he had no benefitcial interest or ownership of the property. These conditions were that i) the appellant immediately vacate the property;
(ii) the property would be rented out privately for the next 3 years (my client had no right to the rental income);
(iii) at the end of 3 years my client would sign the deeds over to the person who'd stumped up the money to purchase the property.

For his troubles my client received about £10,000.00 when the property was purchased in March 1998. He never lived at the property again and he informs us that he used the money to pay off his drug debts etc.

He did not claim benefit until March 2001 at about the time the property was about to change hands.

The property was registered under a new name in May 2001. The property was sold at about this time for £54,000.00.

In 2002 my client was investigated by the fraud team, his benefit stopped and an alleged overpayment made for the perod 11/03/01 7/02/02.

The DWP claim that the overpayment occurred on 2 counts: initially because my client owned property that was not his main home and secondly because on the balance of probabilities he would have received the proceeds from the sale of the property. He clearly did not do so.

I am confident that my client has a good case to argue that he was not the beneficial owner of the property and am aware of the caselaw on this. However, I wondered if anyone else had come across similar cases on Right to Buy properties. I'm pretty sure that at the time this was not an isolated case. Would there be any caselaw directly relating to Right to Buy?

Any help would be greatly appreciated?

I don't personally know of another case of this, but it won't be isolated, there were companies specialising in doing exactly that.
(The main problems being not with the benefits, but with rehousing, the loss of secure tenancies, intentional homelessness, higher private rents, etc).

You could try R(SB)23/85 to see if it is of help to you. If you post a contact I will post you a copy of what I have on this case.

R(SB)23/85 is now one of the decisions to be found in the Cmmrs decisions on rightsnet area of swopshop.