A family of four who have been living in a cramped studio flat for more than half a decade are in line to get a new home after a court ruled that a council unlawfully excluded them. Milton, his wife Cecilia, and their two teenage children were denied a place on Southwark Council's housing register after they were accused of overcrowding their home in a "deliberate act".
But now the High Court has ruled that the council was in the wrong. The family tried to join the housing register in 2018, but was refused priority status when the authority blamed them for overcrowding their home.
That was in spite of the council's own policy stating that they should have been prioritised due to the severity of their overcrowded living situation, reports MyLondon.
Milton and Cecilia's daughter, Rebecca previously told MyLondon: "It affects our studies because the flat is too small. Because we have the beds and the kitchen next to each other and we just have a small table where we eat and do our homework."
She added: "Whilst my mum is doing the food, I am trying to do my homework and it is really distracting and stressful. My brother is playing too, so it's hard to focus. It is so stressful, my head cannot focus. I have to just go outside the flat to get some air to deal with the stress because the flat is too small, I cannot think in there.
"I don’t have any privacy, to change my clothes I have to go to change in the toilet and it's really uncomfortable. I can’t bring my friends home because it's too small – my parents are there and my brother is there. My friends cannot fit inside."
Milton, who wants to keep his surname private, wrote to the council explaining the difficulties he found when looking for suitable housing for him and his family in the private sector, including high rents, unaffordable deposits and how communicating with landlords was a struggle because English is not his first language.
However Southwark Council consistently told Milton and his family that they had caused their own overcrowding by moving to Southwark - a borough with very high average prices in the private rented sector in the first place. The High Court has now ruled that an applicant for council housing cannot be said to have caused their own statutory overcrowding by a "deliberate act" if they lack the funds to afford more suitable housing.
In July 2021 the family received a decision letter which told Milton his overcrowded housing situation was down to the "choices (he) made", which he believes is referring to the fact he and his family moved from Ecuador to South London. Milton had first moved to the UK in search of work in 2016, he was previously living temporarily in Lambeth before his wife and two children joined him.
The letter, seen by MyLondon and which the publication reported on previously, explained why the family's request to be placed in the priority housing bracket was rejected. "It is without question that you would have been aware that the room in a shared house was not going to be suitable to accommodate your family of four," they wrote.
The court found that no reasonable council could have come to the same conclusions as Southwark Council did, and that Milton and his family should not be prepared to move far from their community in order to find decent housing: "The family attends his Church regularly, and they are very dependant on the Church for friendship and support. There is a large Latin American community in the Elephant and Castle area of Southwark […] which has provided support and contacts for the Claimant.
"Both the Claimant and his wife were only able to find work because of word-of-mouth recommendations within the local community. The children’s schools were in Southwark, and the Claimant’s wife mainly worked in the Elephant and Castle. It is therefore understandable that the Claimant and his family wish to remain in Southwark."
Responding to the court ruling in his favour, Milton said: "I had to move to this flat. When we looked at other places the agencies asked us for many months' rent in advance. I couldn’t rent a bigger place because it was too expensive. Southwark have constantly disbelieved me and my wife and tried to make us feel as though we were in the wrong.
"We feel so relieved that the judge has understood the situation we were in and has agreed that the council has broken the law in denying us housing. I hope that this can bring an end to the overcrowding we have faced for over five years."
Milton and his family are members of Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth (HASL), a housing group which campaigns collectively for decent housing in the two boroughs. He was represented at the High Court by the Public Interest Law Centre and Jamie Burton QC and Caragh Nimmo of Doughty Street Chambers.
Elizabeth Wyatt of HASL said: "We are overjoyed for Milton and his family. This is yet another victory won by some of Southwark's most vulnerable private renters against a Labour council who have been set on blaming the victims of the housing crisis.
"For over four years, Southwark Council have subjected the family to disgusting treatment - asking them why they need to live in Southwark, telling them to live in other areas of the country and telling Milton that he should have left his family on another continent instead of reuniting with them. All this time, the family were suffering in unimaginable housing conditions."
Sam Tippet from the Public Interest Law Centre said: "We can only hope that after five years of indefensible gatekeeping, this judgment will finally allow Milton and his family access to affordable and suitably sized long-term housing. However, the root cause of our client’s problem is the extreme shortage of suitable council housing. In Southwark there are over 16,000 people on the housing register.
"The chronic underfunding of adequate housing for people on low incomes is a political failing at a local and national level. In London in particular, this issue disproportionately affects migrant communities and people of colour. Only a commitment to building more council housing will prevent more families being pushed into the intolerable situation that our client has had to endure. There is also an urgent need to introduce rent controls to ensure private tenants can afford a decent home."
Councillor Darren Merrill, cabinet member for council homes and homelessness at Southwark Council, said: "The judge ruled that the council was wrong to assess the family as deliberately overcrowding themselves. We respect the decision of the court and we are carefully reviewing the judgement.
'We should not have described them as deliberately overcrowded, and we are sorry we got this wrong. We’re continuing to work with the family to provide them with support, to ensure their housing needs will be met."
