× Search rightsnet
Search options

Where

Benefit

Jurisdiction

Jurisdiction

From

to

Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Housing costs  →  Thread

Is a room which was provided, and has only ever been used for the purposes of medical treatment a bedroom?

Tom B (WRAMAS)
forum member

WRAMAS - Bristol City Council

Send message

Total Posts: 454

Joined: 7 January 2013

If a claimant was provided with a 2 ‘bedroom’ social sector property solely on the basis they require a dedicated room which needs to be kept sterile for dialysis, could this be argued to be a 1 bedroom property?

I can see references to a FTT HB case (Lall v Westminster) which was successful on similar but not identical grounds and don’t believe this was appealed to UT.

Is anyone aware of any other case law supporting or excluding such an argument?

Tom B (WRAMAS)
forum member

WRAMAS - Bristol City Council

Send message

Total Posts: 454

Joined: 7 January 2013

So having refreshed my memory, I realise this issue was considered in [2016] UKSC 58 and it was held that the regs were not discriminatory in ‘another example of a case where it is not unreasonable for [the claimant’s] claim for benefit sufficient to cover the whole of the rent to be considered on an individual basis under the DHP scheme’.

Firstly, does this negate an argument on the grounds I described in the original post? i.e. that the ‘bedroom’ was never intended, by landlord nor tenant, to be a bedroom?

Secondly, given current pressures on DHP schemes; if applications made by claimants in these circs are refused on the basis of budgetary constraints, does it open the door to further challenges?

(Sorry I know such issues have probably been discussed to death years ago but with UC taking on housing costs, lots of matters which I, as a Local Authority adviser have had little involvement with challenging, are suddenly in scope)

HB Anorak
forum member

Benefits consultant/trainer - hbanorak.co.uk, East London

Send message

Total Posts: 2895

Joined: 12 March 2013

I think you might have a case if it was constructed or adapted to have special features that make it suitable for use as a medical room, but I get the impression that this has been used as a 2-bed property in the past and was allocated to this tenant so that they could use B2 as a medical room.  The consistent position taken by the courts in the Nelson and Nuneaton line of cases is that the dwelling should be imagined to be vacant and the decision maker must consider whether a notional prospective tenant with a 2B need viewing the vacant dwelling would think “Ah yes, that’ll be X’s bedroom”.

Elliot Kent
forum member

Shelter

Send message

Total Posts: 3117

Joined: 14 July 2014

There is a difference between the argument which was rejected in MA (“I have a special need for an additional bedroom”) and the argument which I think you are trying to make (“This room is not a ‘bedroom’ at all”). The door is firmly shut on the former but slightly ajar on the latter. I think it is a very difficult argument in your case for the reasons Peter gives.

Tom B (WRAMAS)
forum member

WRAMAS - Bristol City Council

Send message

Total Posts: 454

Joined: 7 January 2013

Amazing help as always to both of you.

Had a read of those cases last night and it’s all a lot clearer now.

Tom B (WRAMAS)
forum member

WRAMAS - Bristol City Council

Send message

Total Posts: 454

Joined: 7 January 2013

Just popping back into this thread to provide an update in case anybody finds it through keyword searches (dialysis, haemodialysis, bedroom tax) in the future.

Decision back from FTT and the appeal was allowed. We argued the room had ceased to be a bedroom when my client took up the tenancy and for UC purposes, lived in a 1 bedroom property.

Thanks as always to Elliot and HB Anorak for their input and pointing me towards the relevant case law. This was really helpful in distinguishing my client’s circumstances when I picked up the referral and gathered more info.

My client was provided with a 2 bedroom house with the explicit intention of turning the second bedroom into a treatment room with electrical and plumbing adaptations required in order to use the room for haemodialysis. Though the room could still fit a bed and furniture in it if the non structural stuff were removed, the machinery (reverse osmosis machines, water softener, dialysis machine) is fixed to the walls, plumbed in and wired into the mains and it would all need to be removed by specialist contractors. The landlord confirmed these adaptations would need to be reversed before they would consider letting it as a 2 bed property again.