Woman on benefits owing £3,500 rent can't be evicted: New European human rights ruling could lead to thousands of tenants refusing to pay

Published 24th Feb 2011

Evicting a woman from her council home for failing to pay rent would breach her human rights, judges ruled yesterday.

Town Hall chiefs wanted to evict Rebecca Powell, who receives thousands of pounds in benefits, after she ran up more than £3,500 in arrears on the accommodation she was given because she was homeless.

But the Supreme Court said that – under the controversial European Convention on Human Rights – this would be a breach of the right to ‘respect for a person’s home’.

Council leaders and the Government had fought the case and fear it may now be harder to evict thousands of council tenants who fall into arrears.

Legal experts said there was an increasing ‘trend’ for tenants – including ‘neighbours from hell’ – to use human rights law to thwart eviction.

Passing yesterday’s judgment, Lord Hope made it clear the ruling had its origins in Strasbourg. He said the ‘time had come to accept and apply the jurisprudence of the European court’.

The ruling brought fresh demands for reform of Labour’s Human Rights Act, which enshrines the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law, and of the unelected Strasbourg court.

It comes in the wake of cases saying that prisoners must be entitled to vote and that paedophiles can apply to be taken off the Sex Offender Register.

Last night Tory MP Philip Davies said: ‘It seems to me that the courts always find in favour of the human rights of people who are doing something wrong. We have got to change that balance, it is getting completely out of hand.

‘What about the human rights of the landlord to get their rent, what about the human rights of the taxpayer?’

Miss Powell, now 23, was given a home in Cranford, West London, by Hounslow Council in April 2007. By June the following year Miss Powell, who lives with her partner and four children, owed the council more than £3,500.

She was entitled to around £15,000 a year in housing benefit which could have covered the payments, but had not applied for it properly.

Eviction proceedings began but were halted when Miss Powell appealed under the Human Rights Act. At one stage the council moved the family out in order to renovate the home at taxpayers’ expense, then moved them back in.

Yesterday, Lord Hope and Lord Phillips ruled that the council had not considered whether it was ‘proportionate’ to evict Miss Powell and ordered that the eviction be quashed.

Hounslow Council, anticipating defeat, has offered her ‘suitable alternative accommodation’ and she has never been without a home.

Judges will have to consider the ruling when looking at similar cases involving people who would otherwise be homeless.

Miss Powell has agreed to clear her arrears of £3,536.39 at £5 per week, or sooner if she can.

Source: ' Daily Mail '

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