North British HA v Matthews [2004]

The claimants were all tenants of housing associations under assured tenancies. They had fallen into arrears of rent, so possession proceedings were started. There was no dispute that both at the date of the service of the notice of proceedings under section 8 of the Housing Act 1988 and at the date of the hearing, the arrears exceeded the 8 weeks limit specified in ground 8. Therefore, it appeared that  in each case the court was obliged by section 7 of the Act to make an order for possession.

In each case, an application was made to the judge for an adjournment of the possession proceedings. The applications differed in point of detail, but all included the submission that the appellant should be given time to obtain the money to meet the arrears, or at least to bring them below the ground 8 threshold, and thereby enable him or her to defeat the claim. All of the appellants were, or had been, in receipt of housing benefit. They said that their inability to pay the rent was caused by maladministration or other unjustified failures by the housing benefit authorities to pay housing benefit. The courts refused to adjourn and the applicants appealed.

HELD: The Court of Appeal held that the power to adjourn a hearing date for the purpose of enabling a tenant to reduce the arrears to below the ground 8 threshold may only be exercised in exceptional circumstances. The fact that the arrears were caused by maladministration on the part of the housing benefit authority was not an exceptional circumstance. The Court stated that "It is a sad feature of contemporary life that housing benefit problems are widespread." The Court did not consider that the non-receipt of housing benefit can, of itself, amount to exceptional circumstances which would justify the exercise of the power to adjourn so as to enable the tenant to defeat the claim, but they did "acknowledge that this conclusion will lead to tenants who are in receipt of housing benefit having no defence to a claim for possession in circumstances where they are not at fault." 

Citation: North British HA v Matthews [2004] EWCA Civ 1736