Responsibility for asylum-seeking families

Mrs O, a Ugandan citizen, wed lawfully in the UK. After eight years she left the family home, with the couple's children, because of her husband's violence. The council provided her and the children with accommodation and subsistence.

In order to regularise her immigration status, O applied for permission to stay in the UK on human rights grounds. That had the legal effect of making her an "asylum seeker" and of disentitling her from a range of legal support. The council decided that as she was HIV-positive it owed her a continuing accommodation duty but said it could not be responsible for the children, who lived with her – it said they had become the responsibility of the National Asylum Support Service. Mrs O and NASS said the whole family was the council's responsibility.

The court of appeal decided the council did owe her a duty because she was a "destitute person" but that it did not extend to her children; responsibility for the children fell on NASS and they were to be treated as "destitute" even though sheltered with their mother. It decided the practical solution was for the council to accommodate the whole family with NASS meeting the cost of accommodating the children.