The receipt by a soldier, or his or her spouse, of a one-off financial grant from the Police for housing purposes cannot constitute grounds for the loss of entitlement to a housing allowance.
Practice of the Military Housing Agency
For at least several years, the Military Housing Agency (Wojskowa Agencja Mieszkaniowa) — and other military authorities — applied a practice whereby they refused professional soldiers a housing allowance and housing severance pay in circumstances where those soldiers, or their spouses, had received any form of State assistance towards meeting their housing needs. This included, amongst other things, a one-off grant of several thousand złoty paid to Police officers.
The Statutory Provisions
The practice described above was bound to attract objection. As unambiguously follows from the provisions of the Act on the Accommodation of the Armed Forces (Ustawa o zakwaterowaniu Sił Zbrojnych), the list of grounds on which the award of a housing allowance or the payment of housing severance pay may be refused is exhaustive (closed). There is no basis for interpreting it expansively, to the detriment of soldiers who had legitimate expectations of an additional source of funds that was of material significance to their household budgets.
The Position of the Administrative Courts
The above problem was examined on numerous occasions by the administrative courts. Significantly, the Regional Administrative Court (Wojewódzki Sąd Administracyjny) in Warsaw on several occasions upheld the conduct of the Military Housing Agency and confirmed that any form of assistance towards meeting housing needs should preclude the award of a housing allowance and housing severance pay.
The Current Position
Fortunately, in 2021 the Supreme Administrative Court (Naczelny Sąd Administracyjny) unequivocally criticised the approach taken by the Military Housing Agency and the Regional Administrative Court in Warsaw. Since that time, a series of judgments has been handed down clearly indicating that only the situations expressly enumerated in Article 21(4) of the Act on the Accommodation of the Armed Forces provide grounds for refusing accommodation and the payment of housing severance pay. The principle is perhaps most fully illustrated by the judgment of the Supreme Administrative Court of 8 November 2022, delivered in proceedings bearing the case signature III OSK 6026/21.