http://nearlylegal.co.uk/blog/2009/09/without-exception/
Just a place where I’m storing useful stuff until I find a better place for them!
A8 and A2 nationals
From 2 October 2009, the Accession (Worker Authorisation and Worker Registration) (Amendment) Regulations 2009 provides that an A8 national is not longer subject to worker registration if s/he is a family member of an EEA national who has a right to reside in the UK; or if s/he is the spouse, civil partner or child aged under 18 of a person who has leave to enter or remain in the UK without restriction on employment. From the same date, an A2 national is not longer subject to worker authorisation if s/he is a family member of an EEA national who has a right to reside in the UK; or if s/he is the spouse, civil partner or child aged under 18 of a person who has leave to enter or remain in the UK without restriction on employment.
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| 19 Mar 1993 HL Lord Griffiths |
Housing, Children | ||
| No homelessness priority could be established by means of having a child applying for housing, rather than his or her parent. An application by a person suffering mental disability who would also be dependent upon others was also rejected. In each case the true application was by the parent or carer. The Act is concerned with the provision of housing, not social services’ care. A parent or carer would be given priority under the later section by virtue of that care. The authorities’ duties under Part III of the 1985 Act were not owed to dependent children. Lord Griffiths said: ‘Dependent children are not amongst those classified as in priority need. Dependent children depend upon their parents or those looking after them to decide where they are to live and the offer of accommodation can only sensibly be made to those in charge of them. Such a child is in my opinion owed no duty under this Act for it is the intention of the Act that the child’s accommodation will be provided by the parents or those looking after him and it is to those people that the offer of accommodation must be made. If a family has lost its right to priority treatment through intentional homelessness the parent cannot achieve the same result through the back door by an application in the name of a dependent child.’ |
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| Housing Act 1985 59(1) 59(1)(c) | |||
HOMELESS APPLICATIONS, Mr Justice Collins in Aweys v Birmingham CC [2007] EWHC 52 (Admin)
- It is apparent that the threshold for the duty of Councils to act under s.184 is a low one (cf: Mohamed v Manek & another (1995) 27 H.L.R. 439@449) since it arises if they have reason to believe the applicant may be homeless or threatened with homelessness. In the vast majority of cases, the making of the application will mean that it is difficult if not impossible for the Council not to believe that the applicant may be homeless or threatened with homelessness. Furthermore, no particular form of application is prescribed. This is not surprising since the provisions are dealing with people who are likely to be vulnerable and who cannot be expected to have obtained legal advice or to have an acquaintance with the statutory provisions. If it is apparent from what is said by an applicant (for there is no requirement that an application be in writing) or from anything in writing that he may be homeless or threatened with homelessness, the duty is triggered. Thus if a person complains to a Council that the conditions in his existing accommodation are so bad that he wants a transfer or needs to find somewhere else, it is likely that the duty will arise because of s.175(3) even if there is no application based specifically on homelessness. Furthermore, there is no power to defer the inquiry which has to be carried out under s.184(1): see Robinson v London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham [2006] EWCA Civ. 1122. In paragraph 36, Waller LJ said:-
“It also seems to me that it is clear that the authority is not entitled to postpone the taking of a decision simply to avoid a duty.”
In Robinson, the applicant was nearly 18. If under 18, a full duty would automatically have applied. If the authority waited until she was over 18, there would be no such automatic duty. Thus it was in its interest to try to defer the inquiries until she was 18. However, provided its inquiries took only a reasonable time to carry out, if by then the situation had changed, the decision reached would properly be based on the circumstances then existing. What it could not lawfully do was to defer the carrying out of the inquiries even though it thought, having regard to the average time it took to make the necessary inquiries, the applicant would by then be over 18. The circumstances might have been such that it was clear within a very short time that the applicant was under 18 and was homeless so that the full duty was owed.
- Section 188 imposes an interim duty to accommodate in cases where a person might be homeless and in priority need. Since the presence of dependent children produces a priority need (s.189(1)(b)), all the claimants were clearly in priority need if they were homeless. That duty is to secure that accommodation is available for his occupation pending a decision as to the duty (if any) owed to him (s.188(1)). Any accommodation made available by virtue of any of the provisions of Part VII of the Act must be suitable:
http://www.housingcorp.gov.uk/upload/pdf/ASBO_Factsheet_1.pdf
Use of starter tenancies
http://www.housingcorp.gov.uk/upload/pdf/Starter_tenancies_topic_briefing_160708.pdf
ASB and eviction old housing corp guidance -
http://www.housingcorp.gov.uk/upload/pdf/Tenancy_management.pdf
Housing Act 1980 and orders for possession
89 Restriction on discretion of court in making orders for possession of land
(1)Where a court makes an order for the possession of any land in a case not falling within the exceptions mentioned in subsection (2) below, the giving up of possession shall not be postponed (whether by the order or any variation, suspension or stay of execution) to a date later than fourteen days after the making of the order, unless it appears to the court that exceptional hardship would be caused by requiring possession to be given up by that date; and shall not in any event be postponed to a date later than six weeks after the making of the order.
(2)The restrictions in subsection (1) above do not apply if—
(a)the order is made in an action by a mortgagee for possession; or
(b)the order is made in an action for forfeiture of a lease; or
(c)the court had power to make the order only if it considered it reasonable to make it; or
(d)the order relates to a dwelling-house which is the subject of a restricted contract (within the meaning of section 19 of the 1977 Act); or
(e)the order is made in proceedings brought as mentioned in section 88(1) above
DORAN
- As I see it, the effect of Doherty is two fold.
- First, there is no formulaic or formalistic restriction of the factors which may be relied upon by the licensee in support of an argument that the council’s decision to serve a notice to quit, and seek a possession order, was one which no reasonable council would have taken. Such factors are not automatically irrelevant simply because they may include the licensee’s personal circumstances, such as length of time of occupation. In Doherty, where the family had been in occupation for a substantial time without causing any trouble, but the council wanted to use the site in a different way, it might also be thought relevant whether the council had taken any steps to offer the family, or help them to acquire, alternative accommodation.
- Secondly, the question whether the council’s decision was one which no reasonable person would have made is to be decided by applying public law principles as they have been developed at common law, and not through the lens of the Convention.
- There is no conflict between these two propositions, which should be capable of being applied without additional complexity. As Baroness Hale observed in Kay at para 190, in a passage cited by Lord Walker in Doherty at para 108:
“It should not be forgotten that in an appropriate case, the range of considerations which any public authority should take into account in deciding whether to invoke its powers can be very wide: see R v Lincolnshire County Council ex parte Atkinson (1995) 8 Admin LR 529; R (Casey) v Crawley Borough Council [2006] EWHC 301 (Admin).”
- Having said that the question whether the council’s decision was unreasonable has to be decided by applying public law principles as they have been developed at common law, it is to be remembered that those principles are not frozen. Even before the enactment of the HRA, our public law principles were being influenced by Convention ways of thinking. Since its enactment, the process has gathered momentum. It is now a well recognised fact that the Convention is influencing the shape and development of our domestic public law principles, whether one uses the metaphors of embedding, weaving into the fabric, osmosis or alignment. (See the judgment of Lord Walker in Doherty at para 109.)
