Cases - Dee Thomas-Ashley and Drum Housing Association Ltd
Record details
- Name
- Dee Thomas-Ashley and Drum Housing Association Ltd
- Date
- [2010]
- Citation
- EWCA Civ 265
- Legislation
- Keywords
- Reasonable adjustment duty to residential premises - case particular to facts - Disability Discrimination Act 1995
- Summary
-
The Court of Appeal has considered, for the first time, the application of the duty to make reasonable adjustments in relation to residential premises under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995.
In June 2006, following her divorce proceedings and an admission to hospital with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, Ms. Thomas-Ashley moved into a flat which was let as an assured shorthold tenancy.
In October 2007, the appellant's former husband told their daughter that their dog could no longer stay with them. As it was a term of the tenancy that the tenants could not keep pets, the appellant asked her landlord if she could keep the dog but permission was refused. She nevertheless took the dog in. There was evidence that the companionship of the dog and the obligation to care for and exercise him was beneficial to the appellant's mental health and well being.
The Housing Association discovered that she was keeping a dog, and sought possession.
The appellant defended the proceedings on the basis that there had been a failure to make a reasonable adjustment in permitting her to have the dog on the premises, and thus that the eviction would be condoning an unlawful act.
The court ordered possession. Ms. Ashley-Thomas appealed.
The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal. It held that the dog was different to a guide-dog and cannot be compared as the equivalent to a medicine. The applicable conditions of the duty to make adjustments - that if the appellant did not have a disability she would find it impossible or unreasonably difficult to enjoy the premises without the dog - were not, the court found, met. The "no animals" term therefore did not make it impossible or unreasonably difficult for her to enjoy the premises. The right to enjoy the premises cannot exceed what the letting entitles the tenant to do. Further, changing the terms of the lease, as the appellant required, would have provoked forfeiture of the respondents' lease from the head lessor. There was therefore no reasonable step that could have been taken.
Although the first case to deal with the reasonable adjustments duty at appellate level, this case is very particular to its facts. This is not least because it does not involve an 'assistance dog' as such - the court made clear that this would have been a different matter - and because making such adjustments as were required, to the lease would have led to forfeiture of the premises by the head lessor, providing a very good basis on which such an adjustment would not be reasonable.