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Cllr Keith Sedgwick: ‘shabby handling' |
Round two in court battle that pitches family’s right to stay in their home against neighbours’ desire for a peaceful life
Judge backs mother and four children facing eviction because of older kids’ behaviour
IN the narrow passageways of a Gospel Oak housing estate the rights of a young family to keep their home are clashing with the demands of neighbours to be allowed to live in peace.
A mother and her four children under 11 are fighting a legal bid by Camden Council to throw them out of the flat they have lived in for 15 years.
But the Town Hall insists that the wild behaviour of the family’s 10-year-old and his teenage brothers has made the lives of neighbours so hellish that eviction is the only resort.
Three of the older boys have anti-social behaviour orders (Asbos). Two are in custody but will shortly be released, and one is on police bail. One faces trial for an alleged assault on Gospel Oak Conservative councillor Keith Sedgwick.
“The only way to deal with this problem is with the family off the estate,” the council’s barrister Philip Squire told the judge at Central London Trial Centre on Thursday as he tried for the second time in a week to have an injunction imposed on the 10-year-old and his siblings, banning them from the estate even before they are evicted.
For the second time, Deputy District Judge McCormack threw the bid out. Disagreements among the Town Hall’s housing, homeless persons and social services departments over who should take responsibility for the family meant that Mr Squire had to admit that “the local authority is not in a position to offer an alternative property” – and the judge refused to put them on the street.
As the family’s barrister, Joshua Dubin, argued: “Is it within the grounds of exceptionality that a mother and her children should be ousted from their home?”
The family – and the estate on which they live – cannot be identified for legal reasons. But their flat is one of many in Gospel Oak’s major 1970s mid-rise estates, blessed by proximity to Hampstead Heath but periodically troubled by persistent, low-level crime, youth disorder and drug-dealing.
The council’s eviction bid is an attempt to deal with these problems, but with the case adjourned for six months, what the judge called “an unprecedented situation” and a “legal minefield” remains a stalemate that leaves no side happy.
The mother says she is frightened and alarmed. In the courtroom, she sat with her barrister and an interpreter while the ranks of Camden’s legal and housing team filled a third of the room.
But the council, whose lawyers acknowledge that their case may seem “unduly harsh” and “grotesque”, argue that the family presents a “significant risk of harm” to their neighbours, and particularly those who have produced evidence against them.
Judge McCormack, while refusing the council’s demands, has also warned the family. He said: “The criminal record history of this family is atrocious... Clearly, I have not heard evidence in the witness box to that effect [but] I do have a witness statement from the police... Within that document are details of numerous occasions when Mrs [X]’s children have acted very badly.
“An example is on 10 May 2006. It is said [AA] abused a member of the public, and without reporting all the swear words, he said: ‘I’m going to smash your face, I’m going to stab you in the heart.’ If these allegations are correct, it is terrible… There are multiple examples of children within the family acting irresponsibly.”
The case has seen emotions run high, both for the large family of the threatened tenant and for those who claim they are victims of the family’s abuse. Cllr Sedgwick, who has compiled a witness statement giving evidence against the family, reacted furiously to the adjournment and turned on the Town Hall’s housing policy’s mastermind.
He said: “I lay the blame for the situation at the door of Chris Naylor [the councillor in charge of housing]. The shabby handling of this case shows how ineffective his leadership at the housing department has been.”
He also called for more, faster evictions for anti-social tenants.
Cllr Sedgwick said: “I imagine that any decent, law-abiding person out there, living in cramped and overcrowded accommodation, is rightly outraged at the sight of the Lib Dems wringing their hands, their hearts bleeding, over the rights of these scumbags. What the hell are we doing, when we’ve got 16,000 on the housing waiting list, offering accommodation to people who have made people’s lives hell?”
Yesterday Cllr Naylor declined to comment on the case while it was unresolved, but said that his administration had introduced new forms of tenancy precisely so that anti-social behaviour could be halted and if necessary tenants evicted.
“We feel community safety in housing estates is incredibly important, which is why we have brought community safety and housing together,” he said. “We’re trying to deal with the problem in this case and in future deal with problems like this before they get to court.”
The case is adjourned until hearings in October. The mother of the family gave a sworn undertaking to tell her sons aged 16 and 17 that they were no longer allowed to visit or stay at her home, and to inform on her 15-year-old son if he broke bail conditions. |
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