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No discrimination by database

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03 October 2025 / Kelvin Rutledge KC , Genevieve Screeche-Powell
Issue: 8133 / Categories: Features , Housing , Discrimination , Local authority , Equality
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A council’s database for homeless applicants was found not to be discriminatory against women, write Kelvin Rutledge KC & Genevieve Screeche-Powell

  • Tower Hamlets Council has sought to tackle the housing crisis by using a database to help it allocate housing to homeless applicants.
  • In Anisa Begum v London Borough of Tower Hamlets, the appellant claimed the use of the database discriminated unlawfully against her as a woman.
  • The court accepted Tower Hamlets Council’s submission that the database was not a deferral list or otherwise a means of delaying performance of the main housing duty.

In Alibkhiet v Brent London Borough; Adam v City of Westminster [2018] EWCA Civ 2742, Lord Justice Lewison famously remarked: ‘You would need to be a hermit not to know that there is an acute shortage of housing, especially affordable housing, in London; and that local government finance is severely stretched.’ That observation is especially true of family-sized temporary accommodation, which local housing authorities frequently need to discharge

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