Heavey v The Greater London Authority

Case number: ________________________ IN THE COUNTY COURT AT CENTRAL LONDON BETWEEN THE QUEEN on the application of Declan Heavey Claimant - and -

The Greater London Authority Defendant

CLAIMANT’S PARTICULARS OF CLAIM

1.

On 17 May 2014 the Claimant and his wife were granted their tenancy by Family Mosaic Housing Association as clients of the Mayor of London's Housing First rough sleeping service (GLA Housing First) with support from the Single Homeless Project (SHP), one of three charitable organisations funded by the Defendant to operate the Housing First programme within the Greater London area.

2.

Housing First is an internationally acclaimed programme for entrenched rough sleepers, the core principle of which is the provision of permanent accommodation and non-compulsory support (Johnsen with Teixeira, 2010). These principles are contained in a funding agreement (the Agreement) between the Defendant and SHP dated 13 March 2014, which provides that “clients who meet the criteria for a Housing First offer will be offered long term tenancies…. Long term tenancies would mean for a minimum of two years with the possibility to extend and preferably for the lifetime of the client.”

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3.

On 4 September 2014, less than four months into the Claimant and his wife’s tenancy, the Claimant was informed for the first time that GLA Housing First was a pilot scheme culminating on 31 March 2015. The email from SHP states (see Supporting Documents (SD), pp. 28-29): I am writing to inform you of the current situation with GLA Housing First. This scheme was set up as a 3 year Pilot and therefore this will come to an end in March 2015. GLA have informed us that the scheme will not continue after this date due to lack of funding. We have been asked to begin exit strategies for all those who access the service. Clearing House has asked that clients who want to remain in their accommodation and who are managing their tenancies well, are referred back to the clearing house for them to assess. They will then assess these clients to ensure they feel they are able to manage the tenancy with TST [Tenancy Sustainment Team] support.

4.

The Mayor of London's Clearing House rough sleeping service (GLA Clearing House) is operated for the Defendant by St Mungo’s Broadway. GLA Clearing House departs significantly from the key principles of Housing First. It does not provide the permanent accommodation and voluntary support characteristic of the Housing First model. Rather it is a coercive programme that requires clients to comply with holistic support plans and “eligibility for flats, issued on two-year renewable Assured Shorthold Tenancies, terminates when individuals are deemed to no longer require support to live independently” (Johnsen and Teixeira, 2012).

The Court will note that no reference is made in SHP’s email of 4 September 2014 to a possible review of the decision to refer the Claimant and his wife to GLA Clearing House (the “referral decision”) or how the Claimant can make a complaint and how such a complaint will be handled.

5.

The Claimant wrote on numerous occasions to SHP protesting his and his wife’s referral to GLA Clearing House, but to no avail. Finally, on 9 March 2015, three weeks before the GLA Housing First pilot was due to finish, the Claimant sent a judicial review letter before action to the Defendant (SD, pp. 26-27) in which he requested a review of its referral decision and that he be provided with evidence that GLA Housing First would not be continued after the Pilot. In a letter of response dated 23 March 2015 (SD, pp. 23-25), the Defendant alleged that the Claimant’s letter before action did not comply with the Pre-Action Protocol for Judicial Review (PAPJR) and stated that a full response would only be issued upon receipt from the Claimant of a letter before action that complied to the PAPJR.

6.

It is noteworthy that the Defendant in its initial letter of response accused the Claimant of refusing support, which, if true, would have had him and his wife evicted from their home for breach of their tenancy agreement. Neither the Claimant nor his wife has ever refused support that is based on a secure exit plan from GLA Housing First. From the outset of their tenancy, they sought help from their Housing First worker to find training courses and second jobs. But even in regard to the former, the Claimant himself found and completed an IT course to supplement his 2

degree in education and his wife herself found and completed a diploma course in care to supplement her degree in psychology.

7.

On 6 May 2015 the Claimant provided the Defendant with an eight-page letter before action (SD, pp. 15-22) in which he pointed out that the Agreement provided that "secure exit plans" should have been in place for all clients by the end of the Pilot on 31 March 2015. He also again requested that he be provided with evidence that GLA Housing First would not be continued after the Pilot. The Claimant contended that his and his wife’s referral to GLA Clearing House could not possibly be found to constitute a secure exit plan because they are both capable of living independently without support, as conceded by the Defendant in its initial letter of response, and under the GLA Clearing House scheme eligibility for flats terminates as soon as individuals are deemed to no longer require support to live independently.

8.

The Claimant and his wife do not have addictions or mental illness or behavioural issues. Their needs are solely related to the high levels of opposition and disruption they have encountered since moving to England in 2003 from Ireland to run a network of those abused by church, including, inter alia, having been forced to sleep rough on the streets of London for almost four years in total. It is the position of the Claimant that an exit plan from GLA Housing First for both him and his wife must adhere to the terms of their tenancy agreement, and cannot, therefore, involve an exit from the Pilot that terminates their eligibility for their flat on the grounds that they do not require support to live independently.

9.

In a final response letter dated 1 June 2015 (SD, pp. 13-14), the Defendant discounts the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) section in the Claimant's second letter before action. Moreover, having requested a letter from the Claimant that complied to the PAPJR, the Defendant states: “Unfortunately, corresponding with you does not seem to be progressing matters any further and so, while there are many points in your recent letter with which the GLA would take issue, we will not be responding to them.”

10. The Defendant in its final response letter also failed to comply with its duty of candour by once again ignoring the Claimant’s request for evidence that GLA Housing First (as opposed to its Pilot) has ended. In a recent study partly funded by the GLA titled “Housing First in England: An Evaluation of Nine Services”, researchers from the University of York note the positive evaluations of Housing First in North America and Europe and recommend the wider use of the service in England and across the wider UK. And to this day the Defendant’s website still lists Housing First under the heading “Mayor’s rough sleeping services”.

11. On 18 June 2015 the Claimant filed an application for permission to apply for a judicial review against the Defendant (SD, pp. 7-12) as a remedy of last resort. In its Grounds of Defence (SD, pp. 3-6), the Defendant argued that because there is no explanation or definition in the Agreement of what constitutes a “secure exit plan”, it was entitled to choose Clearing House as a replacement for the Housing First pilot.

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The Defendant also states at paragraph 13 that its letter of 23 March 2015 was not a new decision but a response to the Claimant’s pre-action protocol letter, and that it “has not reviewed the earlier [referral] decision or taken any new decision regarding the Claimant’s tenancy”.

12. By order dated 12 August 2015 (SD, pp. 1-2), the High Court refused the Claimant permission to bring judicial review proceedings, principally on the basis that the Claim Form should have been filed within 3 months after the grounds to make the claim arose on 4 September 2014. It is noteworthy that the Defendant in its defence did not furnish the court with any evidence establishing that the Mayor of London’s rough sleeping services no longer includes Housing First, notwithstanding the information contained on the Defendant’s website to the contrary.

13. It is evident from SHP’s email of 4 September 2014, judicial review pre-action correspondence and the Defendant’s Grounds of Defence (in particular paragraph 13) that the Claimant has been repeatedly deprived of his right of review and that the Defendant has not properly considered the impact of the referral decision on his family life. The Claimant and his wife currently have high needs related to the opposition and disruption they encounter as employees of Network for Church Monitoring, a non-profit company (no. 7496571) founded by the Claimant in 2011 that lists among its Honorary Associates two Nobel Laureates as well as a score of notable scholars from around the world. The Claimant’s letter before action dated 6 May 2015 provided the Defendant with the following two examples of the sort of opposition and disruption they encounter, taken from the previous three months alone: (i) On 4 February 2015 the Department for Work and Pensions awarded the Claimant a consolatory payment of £100 for gross inconvenience resulting from the failure of the Department to issue him with a correct P60 for the tax year 2013/14.

Such a consolatory payment is only made in very exceptional circumstances where the errors made are so severe or over such a protracted period of time that it causes the customer clear difficulties in the pursuit of benefits or pursuing a justified complaint. (ii) On 27 March 2015 the Claimant’s landlord Family Mosaic Housing Association awarded him a statutory compensation payment of £225 for six months of delays with repair work following a significant ceiling leak in his and his wife’s bedroom.

Only following the intervention of the Housing Ombudsman (via the Claimant’s local councillor) was the payment finally transferred from the Claimant’s rent account to his bank account on 18 June 2015, thereby avoiding the possible suspension or termination of his Housing Benefit claim.

14. The following two examples are selected from the last month alone: (i) On 13 August 2015, as a direct result of the Claimant’s enquiry, the Chief Executive of Newham Council asked the Council Tax and Benefit section to look into a rent arrears email the Claimant received from Family Mosaic. According to 4

Newham Benefits Service, it appears Family Mosaic increased the rent the Claimant had to pay from 25 May 2015 rather than from 1 June 2015, even though their rent increase letter clearly stated 1 June 2015. The Claimant has subsequently been refused a refund of the higher rate he paid Family Mosaic for week 25 May 2015 to 31 May 2015, without explanation. (ii) On 26 August 2015 the Claimant discovered that the information that came back from GLA Clearing House following his Subject Access Request failed to comply with a County Court order dated 8 May 2015 requesting that it removes from its website unlawfully held information about the Claimant and his wife relating to their debts, their employment status and their alleged mental health condition. At a hearing on 8 May 2015, the Court found sufficient evidence that SHP had acted unlawfully in holding or uploading information about the Claimant relating to his debts, his employment status and an alleged mental health condition and ordered it to pay damages to him for distress of £750.

15. The Defendant is knowingly referring the Claimant and his wife to a scheme that terminates their eligibility to their flat (see paragraph 4 above), effectively condemning them to a life on the street in the short or medium term taking into account the following two factors: (i) The Claimant and his wife’s first period as rough sleepers was from 3 November 2006 to 13 July 2009 (more than two-and-a-half years) after the Department for Work and Pensions terminated the Claimant’s joint claim for Jobseeker’s Allowance, which had been active for a year, because they did not ‘sign on’ for the allowance on 27 September 2006. In fact they were not scheduled to sign on until two days later, as per usual. The Claimant was subsequently deprived of the internal appeal process; nonetheless, his case was dismissed by the High Court, Court of Appeal and European Court of Human Rights. (ii) Their second period as rough sleepers was from 14 April 2013 to 15 May 2014 (more than a year) after they were evicted from a political ‘safe house’ because the live-in landlady’s ex-husband, a consultant psychiatrist, required their flat for somebody with a mental illness. This was the same house former MI5 whistleblower David Shayler lived in for a couple of years until 2007, before he declared himself to be the Messiah that same year and was subsequently ridiculed in the press and media for changing his name to Delores Kane.

16. As the Claimant pointed out in his letter before action dated 6 May 2015, there is in fact a threat to life and wellbeing in this case taking the following range of factors into account: (i) In May 2014 the Claimant and his wife took the significant decision to spend on furnishings the deposit they had for a private sector flat after being informed that as GLA Housing First clients they had the possibility to extend their tenancy agreement beyond the expiry of the initial term. Their flat came without any furnishings whatsoever: they did not have a bed, a table, anything to sit on, not 5

even a cutlery item or cooking utensil of any kind in the kitchen. In order to render the flat habitable, the Claimant even had to install shelves that had been removed from the kitchen and replace curtain rails, curtains and net curtains that had been removed from the balcony and bedroom windows. (ii) The Claimant is in his mid-fifties and while living on the streets was twice hospitalized, once with pneumonia in December 2006 (Chelsea and Westminster Hospital) and the second time with a viral infection in October 2007 (The Royal London Hospital). Last year, the same day a three-month rolling winter night shelter programme closed on 14 April 2014, the Claimant was diagnosed with a chest infection and asthma (Charing Cross Hospital), which is a chronic or lifelong disease that can be serious, even life threatening. Pneumonia and other illnesses that affect the lungs is much more dangerous for asthmatics than other people. (iii) Back on the streets the Claimant and his wife will be restricted to sleeping in night buses despite the Claimant’s asthma and susceptibility to pneumonia, as they had been prior to coming off the streets as a result of an excessive use of force by police officers to move them on from their sleeping pitch that included threatening the Claimant’s wife with arrest on the trumped-up charge of assaulting a female police officer if she did not move on. Since the escalation of the migration crisis this past summer, the police have more powers to move rough sleepers on without having to resort to illegal means to do so.

17. The Claimant contends that the Defendant’s decision to refer him and his wife to GLA Clearing House gives rise to a breach of their rights under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act 1998 which provides that authorities must have respect for private and family life. In Connors v United Kingdom (2004), the European Court of Human Rights held that the eviction of a licensee and his family from the local authority gypsy caravan site was contrary to Article 8. The Court found that the legal framework applying to the occupation of pitches on local authority gypsy sites did not provide the family with sufficient procedural protection of their rights.

Similarly, the legal framework applying to the referral of the Claimant and his wife to GLA Clearing House that has deprived the Claimant of a review of the decision has not provided them with sufficient procedural protection of their rights. Special consideration should be given to the Claimant and his wife’s needs and the opposition they encounter because of their vulnerable position as rough sleepers for almost 4 years in total.

18. The Claimant is therefore making an application to the Court for a declaration that the Defendant has acted unlawfully and an order that it reviews its referral decision and provides the Claimant with the opportunity to appeal the outcome of the review to an independent tribunal if he is not satisfied. Alternatively, the Claimant seeks leave to appeal under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act. Declan Heavey 4 September 2015 6