Discrimination in Social Housing: PSED, Allocations, Homelessness, ASB, Reasonable Adjustments, Remedies and Key Case Law under the Equality Act 2010

Published by a LexisNexis Local Government expert

Practice notes

This Practice Note explores what may amount to discrimination in a social housing setting and the situations in which it may occur. It also outlines the obligations on social housing providers to ensure the needs of people with protected characteristics are met, and to remove or lessen disadvantages they face when accessing housing support services. Social housing providers are treated as public authorities for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010 (EqA 2010). Consequently, public bodies must publish relevant, proportionate information demonstrating how they will meet the public sector equality duty (PSED). See Practice Notes: Specific public sector equality duties—England and Specific public sector equality duties—Wales.

What is discrimination?

Discrimination is the less favourable treatment of an individual or group regarded as ‘protected’ under the EqA 2010 because they have protected characteristics. The protected characteristics are:

age
disability
gender reassignment
marriage and civil partnership
pregnancy and maternity
race
religion or belief
sex
sexual orientation

For further reading, see: Protected characteristics—overview.

Public authorities must have due regard to the need to:

eliminate unlawful discrimination
advance equality of opportunity between those who do and do not share a...

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Jill Morgan

Jill Morgan is a Chartered Legal Executive and the founder of Clear and Credible Ltd, a content writing and copywriting business, specialising in law, local government and social welfare. Jill has specialised in housing law for a number of years, particularly homelessness and possession proceedings. She has a keen interest in social welfare law and associated issues and has contributed to a number of published texts. Jill’s practice extends across all aspects of local government law, including governance, planning, licensing, environmental health, property, housing and commercial contract. In her role as Deputy Monitoring Officer, she was heavily involved in governance arrangements and standards matters. Jill managed the local authority’s licensing team for a number of years and has a wealth of experience in advising at committees, sub-committees and contested hearings. In addition to contributing to the legal practice notes below, Jill has prepared numerous court digests and...

Web page updated on 21/05/2026

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