High Court raises query over Hackney housing beneﬁt claim - The Jewish Chronicle

The High Court has raised concerns about a housing benefit claim in Hackney in a property dispute in the north London borough. The court had been asked to enforce a Beth Din decision on who owned the building. But Clare Ambrose, sitting as a deputy High Court judge in the Chancery division, took the “unusual” step of suggesting the case go back to the Beth Din. In a judgment this month, she said the court may raise concerns that “housing benefit has been claimed on an incomplete or false basis”. The property, 4 Dunsmure Road, in Stoke Newington, which consists of three flats, was registered in the name of Miriam and Morris Rand. In 2007, the Rands, who live elsewhere in the street, took out a morgtage against the property for £640,000. A year later, Morris Rand entered into a heskem, an agreement, for the sale of the property with David Sterling, who had lived in it since 1995. Under its terms, Mr Sterling would take out a mortgage two years later and repay any money owed to Mr Rand. Three months after the heskem, the Rands signed a deed of trust stating they held the property on trust for another man, a relative of Mr Sterling’s called Shimon Stern. In 2014, with the ownership of the building in dispute, Mr Sterling turned to the London Beth Din, which ruled that the Rands should transfer it to him, or to Mr Stern as his nominee. When that did not happen, Mr Sterling went to the High Court to uphold the Beth Din’s decision. Ms Ambrose said Mr Sterling had given evidence that “he had taken over the mortgage” and stopped paying rent. Mrs Rand, in her statement, said Hackney Council had paid Mr Sterling’s rent from 1995 till April this year and she had received payments from the council on his behalf of £300 to £400 a week. The judge said it appeared likely that Mr Sterling’s housing benefit payments were “used to fulfil his obligation to pay the mortgage on what he told the Beth Din was his own property, or what he is now telling the court is the property of Mr Stern”. The judge also believed the Beth Din may not have had the “full relevant information” about the heskem.