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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Housing costs  →  Thread

Bedroom tax and requirement that bedroom must be able to accommodate class of occupier assigned to it

Stuart
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New three-judge panel decision CH/1987/2016 rules that where a class of occupier (in this case two children) are assigned a room under regulation B13, the room must be big enough etc to accommodate that class of occupier.

rightsnet summary now also available

Lee Forrest
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This is really interesting. If I’m reading it correctly, the law now says that if, for instance, an adult lives in a two bedroom house, the ‘spare’ room will need to be suitable for that class of person, in this example, ‘a person who is not a child’, and it’s no longer enough for the LA/ DWP to state that the room is suitable for ‘a child’, because there’s no child that could use the room. Do you read it the same way?

HB Anorak
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I don’t read it quite that way.  I think the point is that a bedroom in the dwelling can only be assigned to a category of occupier for whom it is suitable.

In the UT case there were two same sex siblings both aged under 10.  The first category they could in principle belong to was that of two children of the same sex; the second was two children under 10; and the third was an individual child.  There was no bedroom suitable for two children of the same sex; and there was none suitable for two children under 10.  So they had to be allocated bedrooms as two individual children - one each.  That left none surplus to requirements.

The example of a single adult with a spare bedroom suitable only for a child isn’t assisted by this case: the claimant uses the other bedroom, so designating the spare one as surplus to requirements does not leave anyone being forced to use an unsuitable bedroom.  The surplus bedroom would be suitable for someone somewhere - the Nelson vacant possession approach - but we only get that far if the bedroom is surplus in the first place.  In the case of a single person, it would be surplus because they have got another bedroom that they use.

Lee Forrest
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Well, thanks-  I’m glad I’ve coaxed out something other than my own wildly optimistic reading. Yours makes much more sense. So now it’s just a case of examining whether the other room could reasonably be adapted in order to keep the poor child who gets the top bunk from having his eyebrows singed. 

“An alternative analysis, which produces the same result, is to say that paragraph (5) must be read as a whole. The boys may fall within the wording of head (c) or (d), but they do not fall within their meaning. If there is no room that can accommodate two children of the same sex, neither head (c) nor head (d) is an applicable category within the meaning of the paragraph.

Head (e) covers a child and has to be applied twice to ensure that the claimant is entitled to one room for each of her children.’ (paragraphs 13 to 15)”

[ Edited: 20 Dec 2017 at 01:55 pm by Lee Forrest ]
Lee Forrest
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Ok. I’ve got it. (I’ve got a cold):

1) Look at paragraph 5; decide how many bedrooms the household is entitled to (two in this case, one for the parents and one for the children under 10).
2) Look at the bedrooms. See if they are suitable to be used in the way the rules intend them to be (in this case for a couple, and two children under 10).
3) If neither of the available rooms can be used by (in this case) two children under 10, or two children of the same sex (going down the categories), you arrive at the last category (a child). If the rooms can be used by a child (and only a child), then apply this twice and give each child a room.

So if the room can’t accommodate the characteristic of that which is meant to occupy it, that characteristic cannot apply, and another one can be found (going down paragraph 5).

 

HB Anorak
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Yes, that’s exactly it.

If that process leads you to conclude that there is a spare room, it is at that point that Nelson fires in and we’re no longer looking at the people who currently live there.

Lee Forrest
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Thank you so much (as ever).