Surrey County Council v BC

LORD JUSTICE COULSON, LORD JUSTICE BAKER AND LADY JUSTICE WHIPPLE:

Introduction

This appeal is brought by Surrey County Council (“SCC”) against the order of Calver J (“the judge”) dated 15 December 2023, in which he allowed the claim of the respondent/claimant (“BC”) for judicial review. The judicial review claim asserted that SCC owed to BC, a young person with a troubled background, who had presented to the local housing authority as homeless in September 2019, a duty to support him and provide accommodation under s.20 of the Children Act 1989 (“CA89”).

The judge’s judgment is at [2023] EWHC 3209 (Admin). In his consequential order dated the same day and stamped on 20 December 2023, the judge granted the following declarations: “1. By 18 September 2019 the Defendant owed the Claimant a duty under section 20 of the Children Act 1989 to provide him with accommodation; and 2. The arrangements that the Defendant made for the Claimant to stay with his friend’s mother on and after 17 October 2019 were arrangements made by the Defendant pursuant to section 20 of the Children Act 1989; and 3. The Claimant has thereby acquired the status of “a person qualifying for advice and assistance” under section 24 of the Children Act 1989 and is eligible for consideration by the Defendant for assistance under section 24B of the Children Act 1989.” The judge granted permission to apply for judicial review and allowed the claim to the extent set out in his judgment.

Permission to appeal against the order on most, but not all, of the proposed grounds was granted by Lewison LJ on 11 March 2024. One of the issues on which permission was granted was the judge’s ruling that the claim had been brought in time and/or that BC was entitled to an extension of time up to the date of service of the claim on 9 August 2022.

The structure of this judgment is as follows. In Section 2, we set out the outline facts but do not, at that stage, set out all of the contemporaneous documents in detail. In Section 3, we address the question of delay and whether or not the judge was right to find that the claim had been brought in time. In Section 4, we deal with the substantive issue arising on the appeal, in the following subsections: (1) legal framework; (2) the contemporaneous records and other documents; (3) the judgment; (4) the appeal and cross-appeal – grounds and submissions, and (5) discussion and conclusion. Finally, in Section 5, we consider the question of whether or not it can be