Housing officers "conspired to evict tenant unlawfully", High Court rules

Officers at a London borough conspired to evict a social housing tenant of 23 years standing unlawfully and arranged for his possessions to be destroyed, a High Court judge has found.

Southwark Council has subsequently apologised to the unnamed claimant and settled his claim for damages.

In AA v London Borough of Southwark [2014] EWHC 500 (QB) the claimant had been a tenant of the flat in issue since 2001.

His rent was mainly paid by housing benefit, save for a weekly shortfall that by 2012 had reached £18.59 per week. Throughout the period, the claimant had been in arrears since the shortfall was only paid in part and intermittently. The arrears at the time of the eviction amounted to £2,353.26.

In 2006 a possession order was made. This was subsequently suspended by a succession of four orders culminating in one dated 6 May 2010.

These required the claimant to meet his current weekly rent liability and pay off the arrears in small weekly instalments. Nothing was paid following the last of these orders and Southwark applied for the execution of a warrant for possession.

AA unsuccessfully applied for that warrant to be suspended and it was executed on 23 April 2013. The entire contents of the claimant's flat including his passport, lap tops, papers, personal belongings and furniture were removed from the flat by the local authority and were taken to and destroyed in a refuse disposal facility.

The claimant made repeated unsuccessful attempts in the High Court and county court to regain possession and to regain his belongings and also made repeated unsuccessful attempts to discuss his predicament with various representatives of Southwark.

AA was for a period of over a year street homeless and without financial resources save for the use of a sofa or floor space in accommodation of friends for part of this period and financial assistance from those friends.

He sued Southwark for reinstatement and for substantial damages for his unlawful eviction, unlawful homelessness and for the unlawful destruction of his possessions based on the torts of conspiracy, interference with goods, negligence and misfeasance in public office, breaches of the terms of his contractual tenancy and pursuant to the Human Rights Act under Article 8 of the ECHR.

Providing a summary of his judgment, His Honour Judge Anthony Thornton QC, sitting as a deputy judge of the High Court, said the starting point was a conspiracy involving three employees in Southwark’s housing department “to the effect that the claimant should be evicted at all costs and without the opportunity to obtain a further suspension of the possession order obtained in November 2006”.

The judge explained that since the order had been suspended more than six years before the council wished to execute it, Southwark was not entitled to apply for a warrant, an administrative procedure that did not involve a judge, without first obtaining permission to apply from a judge.

“Having obtained the warrant, the defendant's housing officer failed to place the full facts of the case to the court at the hearing of the claimant's application for a further suspension,” he said.

“The conspiracy also involved the relevant defendant's housing officers short-circuiting the defendant's standard procedures that should have been followed before and during the execution of the warrant and the taking of a dispossessed tenant's possessions into storage for safe-keeping.”

Judge Thornton said these procedures were intended to ensure that any execution of a warrant for possession was fairly, safely and lawfully undertaken.

“The conspiracy continued as an attempted cover-up of the unlawful nature of the original conspiracy and of the unlawful consequences of that conspiracy that had led to the claimant's unlawful eviction, the destruction of the claimant's possessions and his homelessness without financial resources for a lengthy period,” the judge added.

He pointed out that it had been a requirement “for many years” that a landlord must apply to a judge for permission to apply for a warrant for possession if the original possession order had been made more than six years prior to the order even if the order had been suspended by a judge on terms that had not been complied with in the intervening period.

The judgment confirmed that the decisions of the Court of Appeal in Hackney LBC v White (1996) 28 HLR 219 and Patel v Singh [2002] EWCA Civ 1938 and the underlying CCR were applicable to Southwark's application for a warrant in this case and to the claimant's eviction pursuant to that warrant.

Judge Thornton found that the council’s contention that the 6-year period only started to run after an order in Hassan form further suspending the possession order had been made on 20 February 2007 was unsustainable. The warrant and its execution were, on that ground alone, unlawful.

The judge concluded that:

1. The eviction was unlawful and an abuse of process “both because the warrant was issued without the prior permission of the court and in the manner in which it was executed”;
2. The various officers in Southwark’s housing department conspired to evict the claimant by unlawful means, to seize and destroy his possessions by unlawful means and to cause him harm and loss be evicting him of his possessions by unlawful means. “This conspiracy was subsequently covered up by a further conspiracy which gave rise to abuse of process in the subsequent court proceedings and to a continuing deprivation of the claimant's enjoyment of his tenancy and loss of his possessions”;
3. Three officers exercised their powers as public officers in relation to a local authority secure tenancy “for an improper motive with the intention of harming the claimant by having him evicted when there were no reasonable grounds for his eviction and by arranging for his possessions to be seized and destroyed unlawfully”;
4. The claimant had, as a result of these facts, also been caused loss “by the negligence of the council, by its breach of his right to the quiet enjoyment of his tenancy and as a result of the lack of respect shown to his private life by the defendant”;
5. The claimant was entitled to substantial damages that extended to special or general damages, aggravated and exemplary damages and damages for breach of contract and for the various torts he had been subject to and for equitable remuneration for the lost work stored on his hard drives, discs and memory sticks and for his lost photographs as well as a remedy for the loss of his tenancy on a basis still to be determined.

The remedies and damages to be awarded were to be dealt with at a second trial. However, Southwark has since reached a confidential settlement with the claimant.

Cllr Richard Livin`gstone, Cabinet Member for Housing, said: "As a council we realise we got things very wrong when dealing with this person and their possessions. We have apologised for any distress we may have caused and do so again following the High Court judgment. We acted swiftly and took strong disciplinary action against our staff when this came to our attention and we have also settled the claim against us.

"We have also looked closely at our procedures to try to ensure that there is no repeat of this highly unusual, but very distressing, scenario in the future. Poor treatment of tenants and residents is totally unacceptable and we will be reviewing the judgment very closely to see if there is any further action we need to take."