The ECtHR Chamber has delivered its decision in McDonald v UK. For the reasons given below, the Court has decided that there was no breach of Article 8 ECHR following the reduction in Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea’s care services package for Ms...
Spoiling the Broth
Blake and others v LB Waltham Forest [2014] EWHC 1027 (Admin) is a judicial review challenge to the local authority's decision to terminate a licence held by Christian Kitchen (the 3rd Claimant) to operate its soup kitchen out of the Mission Grove Car Park,...
Article 8 and the Private Sector
In one sense, the possession claim in Manchester Ship Canal Developments v Persons Unknown [2014] EWHC 645 (Ch) follows a fairly predictable course. The Defendants were a group of activists who had set up camp on Barton Moss Lane, Manchester, in protest at...
So Article 8 isn’t always useless then?
Any keen follower of housing law (no laughing for those of you who have stumbled across this blog for the first time; we do exist) will know that the decade long struggle surrounding the admissibility of the Article 8 defence culminated mainly in...
Basically, we are all…
Associated Electrical Industries Ltd v Alstom UK [2014] EWHC 430 is the latest case to be handed down in the post Jackson/Mitchell dystopian legal world (see here, here and here for our other notes). Andrew Smith J (who you may remember was one of the...
Housing and Human Rights Round-Up Pt 2
Pelipenko v Russia 16/1/14 We reported the ECtHR's decision on the merits here. There now follows the Chamber's decision on the claim for just satisfaction. The Applicants' claim for the breaches of Art 6 and Art 8 broke down into 4 parts: 1. the purchase...
Housing and Human Rights Round-Up Pt 1
Winterstein v France 17/10/13 (judgement in French only) The applicants in this case were travellers who were part of a community that had occupied land on a site (known as bois du Trou-Poulet) in the Herblay region of France and had made it their home over...
Unsuccessful challenge to 52 weeks rule in Housing Benefit Regs
Obrey v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2013] EWCA Civ 1584 concerns an appeal against an Upper Tribunal (Administrative Appeals Chamber) decision which set aside the findings of the First-tier Tribunal (Social Security and Child Support) that Reg....
Failed claim for adverse possession
It wouldn’t be Christmas without a post on adverse possession so here is Smart v London Borough of Lambeth [2013] EWCA Civ 1375……..(*struggles to find Christmas link*). An oddity in this case is that Mr Smart, who was claiming adverse possession against...
“Mere likelihood” not enough to engage section 149
Swan v Gill [2013] EWCA Civ 1566 apparently attracted quite a bit of attention at the HLPA conference this year, the general consensus being that the Court of Appeal was wrong in its approach to s.149 Equality Act 2010 and I’m inclined to agree. Mr Gill, an...
Dialogues with spammers
[Caution, this post contains asterisks and interior design] The 'guest post request' spam continues to flood in (see here and here). 6 or 7 a day. Usually it goes straight into the trash but sometimes... Hello, I would love to send you an article with...
What use is a Zambrano right of residence?
A couple of years ago a lot of lawyers practising in housing, immigration and welfare benefits got very excited by the case of Ruiz Zambrano (European citizenship) [2011] EUECJ C-34/09. The reason for this excitement was that the ECJ said that art.20, of the...