Privacy in B&B

The council accepted Mr Orejudos as homeless and booked him into a B&B hotel. He was required to sign the hotel register each day and to sleep there each night unless he provided, in advance, an explanation for his absence.

Following a warning, he was absent on 10 occasions, only three of which he had explained.

The council cancelled the booking and said Orejudos had become homeless intentionally.

He appealed, claiming the conditions amounted to a violation of respect for his private life because he should be free to sleep where he wanted without having to explain himself.

The Court of Appeal decided that a homeless person was as much entitled to respect for his private life as anyone else, but that the conditions did not prevent Orejudos sleeping elsewhere – all that had been asked was that he provide a reasonable explanation if he chose to do so. The hotel was paid for by the council on a daily basis and there was an obvious need to control costs. Those factors balanced out the intrusion on his own freedom of choice and the result was that there had been no infringement of his right to respect for his private life under Article 8, Schedule 1, of the 1998 Human Rights Act.