Archive for July, 2007

Legal Aid, one Judicial Review down…

Published
by
Nearly Legal
on 23 July 2007
in Legal Aid
. 2 Comments

The Society of Asian Lawyers and the Black Solicitors Network judicial review of the LSC proposals has been settled after an adjournment on the basis that the LSC carry out a full retrospective and prospective cumulative Race Equality Impact Assessment. (See the Law Society press release here).What Price Justice

Top work all round. The assessment should have some interesting results, unlikely to be good news for the LSC.

Also, there is an early day motion set up. EDM 1961 calls on the government to postpone the regulations and meet with all stakeholders to find an alternative future for legal aid. Get your MP to sign it.

Waiting for Counsel

Published
by
Nearly Legal
on 17 July 2007
in whatever
. 2 Comments

(With apologies to Samuel Beckett, Literature, and everyone else)

Act 1
Darkness. Lights up. Trainee sitting on a worn vinyl bench, to the right a board on the wall, with sheets of tattered A4 paper pinned to it. To the left a swing door. Trainee wrestles with zip on case with wheels next to bench. Sits back exhausted. Looks over at the board.

Trainee: Listed for 10.30 [pause, eyes to the front] In the 10.30 list. [slumps further down on bench] Fifth on the 10.30 list. [reaches towards case] Can’t be helped and the usher [looks longingly to the left] said [mutters] two applications and two CMCs. [Long pause, reaches down case and tugs at zip, fails. Sits back and sighs. Brightly] No family cases. We will be heard. [Checks watch. Looks around. Hopefully] We. [Pulls mobile phone from pocket, looks at it, shakes head and puts mobile on case]. Just an interim application [pause] interim [laughs shortly].

Client, facing away, half raises into view over back of bench.

Client: [groans, drops below back of bench]

Trainee: Don’t go off on me now, We may need you. [Hopefully] We. [leans forward to look at mobile phone, shakes head, sits back] and we will be heard [long pause, looks at board]. A necessary step [pause] one we are required to make, in order to [stops. looks longingly to the left] in order to take the next step [leans back over bench] there is movement still. [pause, slumps forward]. He attends, can’t ask more than that. [reaches for case, tugs at zip, fails. Sits upright] the robing room! [pause, slumps. Mutters] there or elsewhere, not here yet.

Client: [groans, out of view]

Trainee: He wearies [shrugs] he hopes to see the end. [slumps further] There must be hope of an end. For there has been a beginning [pauses, looks at case] or an opening at least. And that is a start, for there must be a beginning for there to be an end at all. That step we have accomplished to the satisfaction [pause] no, not that, the acknowledgment of all. [Brightly] So we have begun. [Anxiously] We [leans forward to look at mobile, shakes head, sits back]. There is then a possibility of an ending [pause, considering] Perhaps. All things are possible, the rest is mere quibbling over probability, a chalking up of the odds, better left to bookies and divinities. [Pause] Shall I mention Sisyphus? [pause] No, save that for later. Only in extremis, remember that.

Client: [whimpers, out of view]

Trainee: [mutters] Or if not an ending, a closing [kicks case, stubs toe.] And a drawing up of accounts. That would suffice. [Pause. Looks longingly to left] I swear I saw an usher before. [Pause. Firmly] We are on the list. [checks watch, looks quickly around. Nervously] We. [starts to lean forward to look at mobile, halts, sits back]

Lights down. Darkness

Act 2
Lights up. Scene as before. Trainee alone, lying on bench

Trainee: [despairing sigh] The afternoon list. [pause] I suspected as much. Once something has not happened then it is too much to hope that it will not not happen again.

Client: [hand appears on top of bench, clutches weakly then falls back]

Trainee: [feebly] We are on the list. [Glances around. Hollowly] We. [Case on wheels falls over].

Lights down.

End.

Double-take Corner

Published
by
Nearly Legal
on 15 July 2007
in whatever
. 0 Comments

Brownfields to Brown homes?

Published
by
Nearly Legal
on 15 July 2007
in Housing law and whatever
. 1 Comment

I’ve been adopting a wait and see approach to the Brown government, but if this report in the Observer is true, it is most certainly a good thing. Councils are apparently to be permitted to build more housing stock and possibly have rent income released back to them to do so.

I’ve called for this before. The reasoning  is simple. Housing Associations can’t and/or won’t invest the capital on anything like the scale required. The private sector was always going to be hopeless in providing housing for the low income (and only the most utterly deluded of Thatcherites ever thought otherwise). Historically and for the foreseeable future, it takes state support via local authorities to provide sufficient half-decent homes.

Also interesting is a suggestion of a crackdown on Buy to Let properties being left empty. That is going to be an intriguing one to pull off.

We now expect a housing green paper in a week’s time. I can hardly contain my excitement.

Now, to make this housing lawyer (to be) very happy, how about implementing the Law Commission Renting Homes report (pdf) via its Draft Bill (pdf) at the same time? C’mon Yvette, talk to Jack and Gordon

Publawyer on public function

Published
by
Nearly Legal
on 13 July 2007
in Housing law
. 2 Comments

Just a quick note that Publawyer has posted an excellent discussion of YL v Birmingham and the broader impact on thinking about functional public authorities for the purposes of the Human Rights Act. Sure, it’s a bit late, but he’s been away. It makes a good counterpoint to Head of Legal’s view.

Personally, I side with Publawyer. As the duties and activities of public authorities are increasingly contracted out to private sector and not for profit organisations, and often at arm’s length to boot, an open view of ‘public function’ strikes me as increasingly required. Head of Legal’s worries that something as simple as being a regulated industry, or a private body in any way supported by public funds, e.g. housing benefit, would come to fall under the HRA, strike me as unsustainable.

For example, housing benefit may sometimes be paid directly to the private landlord, but the entitled person is the tenant. This is significantly different to a payment made to a care home by a local authority to provide services which are pursuant to a duty of the local authority. One is a simple subsidy of the tenant, the other is the contracting out of a service provision which the authority has a duty to provide. But for the moment, I guess I’m on the losing side.

The horse’s mouth

Published
by
Nearly Legal
on 12 July 2007
in Housing law
. 2 Comments

I was delighted to see some comments from members of the Community Law Partnership on this blog today, adding to my notes on some of their Court of Appeal cases.

The comments are detailed and very helpful, adding a lot to my scanty commentary, so, for the housing lawyers amongst us, it is well worth reading their comments on my posts on

Shala v Birmingham

Aweys v Birmingham

Omar v Birmingham

and now

Doherty v Birmingham (House of Lords bound, apparently)

And to the CLP people, lovely to see you here, what took you so long? And where is your website?