Court of Appeal

Published July 6, 2007

Shala and Another v Birmingham City Council

Local authorities had to take care not to appear to be using professional medical advisers simply to provide or shore up their reasons to refuse applicants’ applications for housing as persons in priority need.

There was no rule that a doctor could not advise on the implications of other doctors’ reports without examining the patient; but if he did so, the decision-maker needed to take the absence of an examination into account.

The Court of Appeal (Lord Justice Mummery, Lord Justice Sedley and Mr Justice Lightman) so held in a reserved judgment on June 27, 2007 allowing the application for permission to appeal and allowing the appeal of Hamdi Shala and Sabrie Shala, Kosovan refugees granted indefinite leave to remain, against Judge McKenna who, in Birmingham County Court on August 2, 2006, dismissed their appeal and upheld the council’s decision letter of April 3, 2006, that their overall circumstances were not severe in nature and that they were not in priority need.

LORD JUSTICE SEDLEY said that there was no harm and some good in medical advisers directly addressing, if appropriate in exact terms, those matters within their professional competence which the local authority had to decide, as long as both recognised that it was for the authority to make its own appraisal of every opinion in the light of the evidential material.

Absent an examination of the patient, the adviser’s advice could not itself ordinarily constitute expert evidence of the applicant’s condition. The council’s review decision had to be retaken.

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