Sale of property — Contract for sale — Breach of contract — Claim for damages — Claimants complaining that construction of apartments of poor quality and failing to complete Claimants bringing action to recover deposits Claimants placing unilateral notices against property at Land Registry — Whether court having power to vacate notices Application granted.
Local authority powers to evict gypsies and travellers have been strengthened by a landmark House of Lords ruling.
Seven law lords have rejected a test-case appeal by a family of travellers, who argued that their human rights had been breached after they were ordered to vacate a recreation field owned by Leeds City Council.
The law lords backed a March 2005Court of Appeal ruling that councils were legally entitled to take back their own land. The case has been recognised as having potentially wide implications for unauthorised camping.
The Maloney family, who moved onto the site at Spinkwell Lane, near Wakefield, in 2004, claimed that their eviction amounted to a breach of their right to a home, privacy and family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Judges in the Court of Appeal had ruled against the family, but referred the case to the law lords on the ground that two previous rulings in the European Court of Human Rights and the House of Lords contradicted each other.
Lord Scott said that no court, either domestic or in Strasbourg, has ever suggested that a trespasser can assert an Article 8 right to respect for an “unlawfully established” home as a defence to the owner’s eviction proceedings.
“The balance must come down with a resounding clank in favour of the local authority,” he said.
Lord Bingham added: “It seems to me all but unarguable that the recreation ground at Spinkwell Lane on which the appellants parked their caravans was ever their home within the meaning of Article 8.
“On the agreed facts, they had been on the site for two days, without any authority whatever, when the council issued proceedings for possession. There is nothing to suggest that they could show such continuous links with the land as would be necessary if it were to be regarded as their home.”
He said that, even if the site were their home, the eviction “accorded with domestic property law, which had the legitimate end of enabling public authorities to evict unlawful squatters from public land and restore it to public use”.
The Maloney family, which claims that the council have failed to comply with government guidelines that provide for their medical and welfare needs, has allegedly been previously evicted from around 50 sites.
Kay and others v Lambeth London Borough Council and others; Leeds City Council v Price and others House of Lords (Lord Bingham of Cornhill, Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead, Lord Hope of Craighead, Lord Scott of Foscote, Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe, Baroness Hale of Richmond, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood) 8 March 2006.
Jan Luba QC, David Watkinson, Kelvin Rutledge and Alexander Offer (instructed by Nicholas & Co and Thomas & Co in the first appeal, and Davies Gore Lomax, of Leeds, in the second) appeared for the appellants; Andrew Arden QC, Terence Gallivan and John McCafferty (instructed by Devonshires) appeared for the respondents in the first appeal; Ashley Underwood QC and Thomas Tyson (instructed by the legal department of Leeds City Council) appeared for the respondents in the second appeal.
References: EGi Legal News 08/03/06
