Source: http://nearlylegal.co.uk/blog/2013/09/of-bedrooms-that-arent/
Timestamp: 2015-01-26 18:25:38
Document Index: 487774337

Matched Legal Cases: ['EWCA ', 'EWCA ', 'EWCA ', 'EWCA ', 'EWCA ', 'EWCA ', 'EWCA ', 'EWCA ']

Menu	Of bedrooms that aren’t
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20 Comments	Andy (@NCCLols)
Reply	The Tribunal would have no business wandering off on a frolic of its own. If the appeal has nothing to do with bedrooms, raised by neither party, the Tribunal should not consider the issue.
Reply	It has the powers to do so though. It’s analogous to someone appealing against their Care Component of their DLA and the Tribunal decides to look at the Mobility Component too. My knowledge is rusty but as far as I remember caselaw has approved of such an approach as long as fair warning is given, opportunity to adjourn etc, especially when doubts might be obvious.
Reply	Yes, a fair point. It may also depend if there was a rent reduction.
Reply	But if the Council (as Benefit Authority) do inspect, what criteria have they got to decide if a room is a bedroom? None. None at all. Unless and until some criteria emerge from FTT and UT case law (or the County Courts in defending possession proceedings) the Council has no basis to make a decision against the landlord’s reports. The opening remarks are neither here nor there. I doubt that any Council would be particularly embarrassed by them.
Reply	Normally, when something is not defined in legislation the first port of call is the ordinary English usage of the word. As I implied above, in most cases a bedroom is a bedroom is a bedroom. So the Council will inspect and say “Yep, that’s a bedroom alright”. Most of us if we’re honest, faced with somebody trying to convince us that their 2 bedroom house was in fact only a 1 bedroom, would assume that that person has issues.
Reply	Oh no argument on the dog’s breakfast.
Reply	Joe, you are asking for it to make sense. It doesn’t. The point being that the regulations don’t provide either a definition or a point of reference (apart from the landlord’s description). The benefit authority is a creature of statute. It simply can’t go round inventing its own criteria, or even deciding which criteria it is going to rely on for itself. If it did so, it would face challenges from landlords and tenants.
Reply	The difficulty is that all previous means of deciding – including the rent officer referral – has been expressly removed.
Reply	The comparison with the private sector is a red herring. Under LHA housing benefit only has to work out what size property they household needs and pay out accordingly, it doesn’t matter what size property they actual go on to rent. DWP unfortunately overlooked this when claiming the bedroom tax would just replicate the rules that private tenants have abided by for years.
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Is this the first recorded screw up by the not-solicitor Kevin Gregory (later of Charles Henry/Legal Action)? bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/… @nearlylegal
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