Supreme Court ruling Vulnerable Single Homeless Council refusing to help?

[speedfreek]

To put it bluntly Councils have been saying to people faced with homelessness that you will have the same issues as the street homeless have now so are not more vulnerable. Also because you have these issues before you become homeless there will be no risk soi we do not have to help you. Judge says [naughty word]!

 

http://nearlylegal.co.uk/blog/2015/05/vulnerability-a-fresh-start/

 

Comments

 

This will take some time to consider and work through.

 

The change to the Pereira test is very significant and potentially far reaching. Certainly, council’s decisions on vulnerability will have to be detailed, considered and taking all of the applicant’s particular circumstances into account in a composite way.

 

The old shibboleths of ‘well, the homeless are depressed/take drugs/are at more risk of sexual or physical abuse/self harm/have suicidal ideations’ are out of the window. The use of statistics about the actually homeless is likewise of no relevance to a decision on vulnerability. The Johnson/Ajilore route for councils of finding the already vulnerable amongst the actually homeless as the comparator for the applicant’s vulnerability is at an end.

 

The simple question is ‘Is the applicant more vulnerable than an ordinary person if made homeless?’

 

No doubt elements of this definition will be headed to the Court of Appeal before too long.

 

On third party support, while there is a clear logic and indeed some precedent to Lady Hale’s dissenting view, the judgment makes clear that the simple assumption that an able bodied third party in a household able to offer support to the applicant will overcome the applicant’s vulnerability is not adequate.

 

What must be considered, in detail, is the likely consistency and duration of the support on the one hand, and the adequacy of the support to overcome the vulnerability on the other. Any decision that does not address these issues will fall short, and will also likely fall short on the public sector equality duty also, give the complementary relation to Part VII duties.

 

The findings on the Equality Act are not a surprise to anyone who followed the hearings, but the findings at paras 78 and 79 are a useful indicator that the PSED must be in the decision maker’s mind and there must be a proper focus on the applicant’s disability (or other protected characteristic).

 

There will no doubt be much more on these decisions to follow. It is, I think, the most significant homelessness decision in many years and one which may have an impact on treatment of the group hitherto most hard hit by homelessness decisions, the single homeless.

[honeybee13]

Thank you for posting this, speedy. Worrying, I agree.

 

HB

[speedfreek]

Thank you for posting this, speedy. Worrying, I agree.

 

HB

 

Supreme Court HB so until changed by another SC decision or a higher Court ruling this is the current interpretation of regulations and law!

 

Councils have basically been ignoring the spirit of the law and regulations whilst making their own rules up to deny people who are vulnerable help where the law/regulation has been designed to provide that help.

 

This is the ruling that we (not me personally as I'm just reporting) hope will stop this! Councils are nasty big machines that don't give a ..... The more people who know this and use this the better!

[honeybee13]

I agree.

 

HB

[Conniff]

I think a lot of this, and most problems with councils, is that, as always, we don't complain enough. As with council tax, they don't seem to have any interest at all in why you can't pay, just hand it straight over to the bailiffs.

Unless we make ourselves heard, from bringing your bin to your boundary but the dustmen leaving it three doors away, to the leaders £¼million paypacket, nothing will happen.

[silverfox1961]

I feel the obstacles councils put in the way of complainants eventually puts them off complaining further. Councils have two or three stage complaints procedures which must be used before anyone can escalate the complaint to the Local Government Ombudsman.

 

In my own case, a simple misplaced apostrophe caused me years of problems with my council who kept saying I had been overpaid housing benefit. The LGO had to visit the council offices to get all the paperwork as the council were reluctant to release them.

 

The result. I won and compensation.

[Nystagmite]

That's my experience, silverfox. In my case, they quite clearly hadn't read what was written on my housing forms and had ignored the emails where as well as telling my needs had changed and had also ignored the fact that I can't fill in their inaccessible forms.

 

As a result, I was living somewhere unsuitable and it was becoming more and more difficult. The argument was I should be grateful I should have somewhere to live!

[mikeymack2002]

Have some of you read the judgement regarding homelessness from the SC? if not it's worth reading see attachment. This Judgement was issued on the 20/05/2015 see bleow

 

 

Obtained from here https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2014-0185-judgment.pdf

 

This was one of the cases that I have recently watched on (SC TV on demand) from here

https://www.supremecourt.uk/current-cases/index.html

 

 

Sometimes when I am bored I sit and watch some of these cases and how complex they are.

[Noah1]

Councils attemt to excuse their own actions. Even if you write complaint, this doesn't necessarily mean that you get always justice, because they work together afterall. In my experience they sometimes cover each other up and dust up complaint in the early stages. My assumption is that if one proceeds with complaint stages, they should be more vigilant, but I don't have personal experience.

[dx100uk]

Councils attemt to excuse their own actions. Even if you write complaint, this doesn't necessarily mean that you get always justice, because they work together afterall. In my experience they sometimes cover each other up and dust up complaint in the early stages. My assumption is that if one proceeds with complaint stages, they should be more vigilant, but I don't have personal experience.

 

 

thread is 2yrs old

now closed.

 

 

dx