According to this article, the Residential Landlords Association are up in arms about the European Court of Human Rights being about to rule on article 8 defences in a case affecting private land owners. Richard Jones, the RLA policy director (and a solicitor who some might think should really know better) is quoted as saying:
“If Europe decides that respect for the home provisions within the Human Rights Convention apply to private landlords this will lead to a mass exodus of landlords, causing untold misery for those in desperate need of a place to live.”
There are a few problems with that statement, but perhaps the most immediate one is that the case the RLA appear to be on about is not actually in front of the ECtHR at all. It is, in fact, in front of the entirely UK based Court of Appeal, Malik v Persons Unknown, (the Heathrow trespass case – our earlier report) in Mid January 2013. Somehow this appears in the article as the ‘ECHR’s court of appeal’…
This isn’t the first time the RLA has wholly inaccurately got its knickers in a twist about Art 8 cases. One might have thought they would have learnt to check before fulminating about ‘Europe deciding’.
Oh, was that a wolf?