71 Queen’s Road West London E13 0PE 6 May 2015 Anna Condliffe Principal, Public & Regulatory Law Team Transport for London Legal, on behalf of: The Greater London Authority 7th Floor, Windsor House 42-50 Victoria Street London SW1H 0TL
Dear Ms Condliffe Your response to my Letter Before Claim Thank you for your letter dated 23 March 2015. My Letter Before Claim dated 9 March 2015 (not 26 July 2014 as you state) complied with the Pre-Action Protocol for Judicial Review. It also contained a claim that can be brought against the Greater London Authority (“GLA”). The purpose of this letter is simply to elaborate on the decision being challenged and establish whether litigation can be avoided. On 17 May 2014 my wife and I were granted our tenancy by Family Mosaic Housing Association as clients of the Housing First Programme (“Housing First”) with support from the Single Homeless Project (“SHP”), one of three charitable organisations funded by the GLA to operate the Mayor of London’s Housing First service within the Greater London Authority area. You state in your letter that SHP has informed you that Clearing House’s Tenancy Sustainment Team (“TST”) has tried to engage with me to ensure that I am aware that support is available to my wife and myself but that this support has been refused by me. Please note that neither my wife nor I have ever refused support that is based on a “secure exit plan” from Housing First. It is disingenuous to construe this as some sort of refusal of support on my part, which, if true, would have us evicted from our home. My Letter Before Claim challenged the decision of GLA Housing First to refer my wife and me to St Mungo’s Broadway’s Clearing House Programme (with TST support) that does not provide the permanent accommodation and voluntary support characteristic of Housing First. Nonetheless, in your letter you state the following: “The practical effect of the end of the Housing First project is simply that SHP will no longer have a role in relation to the provision of support for your tenancy and that role will be fulfilled by TST instead.” Page 1 of 8
This letter challenges this decision you made on behalf of the GLA to uphold our referral to Clearing House/TST (hereinafter referred to as “the decision”), notwithstanding the concerns I expressed in my Letter Before Claim about the insecure nature of such an exit plan from GLA Housing First. It will be further argued in this letter that your illconsidered response constitutes a threat to life (see section 5, paragraph 13 below). In my Letter Before Claim I requested that you provide me with documentation that demonstrates that GLA Housing First has ended and will not be continued. Not only did you not provide me with any such evidence, but the GLA website still lists Housing First under the heading “Mayor’s rough sleeping services”. The url for this page is: https://www.london.gov.uk/priorities/housing-land/tackling-homelessnessovercrowding/rough-sleeping/no-second-night-out In your letter you suggest that a pilot Housing First funding agreement between GLA and SHP that ended on 31 March 2015 demonstrates that GLA Housing First has closed down indefinitely, which it does not. Nor can it possibly justify an exit plan that contravenes the core principle of Housing First, namely the “provision of permanent accommodation and (non-compulsory) support” (Johnsen with Teixeira, 2010). 1. Proposed Defendant The Greater London Authority 2. The Claimant Declan Heavey 3. Reference details GLA/911/STG 4. The details of the matter being challenged The GLA’s decision of 23 March 2015 to uphold GLA Housing First’s referral of my wife and me to Clearing House/TST in contravention of the “secure exit plan” stipulated in the 2014/15 Housing First funding agreement between GLA and SHP at Schedule 2. 5. The issue 1. In a recent study partly funded by the GLA titled “Housing First in England: An Evaluation of Nine Services”, researchers from the University of York note the positive evaluations of Housing First in North America and Europe. This study recognizes that Housing First services offer “permanent housing with security of tenure” (page 17), and that “housing is not conditional on accepting support” (page 3).
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2. Indeed, this permanent accommodation and voluntary support characteristic of Housing First is reflected in the 2014/15 Housing First funding agreement between the GLA and SHP at Schedule 1: Project Description. On the provision of permanent accommodation (page 25): Clients who meet the criteria for a Housing first offer will be offered long term tenancies…. Long term tenancies would mean for a minimum of two years with the possibility to extend and preferably for the lifetime of the client. [emphasis added] 3. And on the provision of non-compulsory support (pages 25 and 26): Upon moving into a property the client would not be required to engage in any service other than with his Housing First worker. The client will be able to remain in the accommodation so long as they are able to maintain their tenancies (i.e. they manage their housing benefit claim to pay the rent and do not face eviction for antisocial behaviour etc.). The Housing First worker would be responsible for providing and bringing in the support required to help the client meet these basic obligations. Whilst the client is under no obligation to engage with other support services the Housing First worker will work with the client to give them information on services that the client could access…. [emphasis added] 4. You state in your response to my Letter Before Claim that St Mungo’s Broadway’s Clearing House scheme cannot make any open-ended commitment as to our tenancy, and that “this would not have been the case under the Housing First scheme either”. On this point, the aforementioned study from the University of York states (page 34): [GLA Housing First] had access to social housing through the Clearing House arrangements, which while it was reported as taking between 12-24 weeks to secure housing, represented unusually rapid and reliable access to social housing in the context of London. A potential concern about this arrangement was that twoyear assured shorthold tenancies were offered. These tenancies were renewable, subject to ongoing (high) support needs. However, while someone could theoretically be asked to move on, the arrangement was generally thought to effectively offer ongoing security of tenure. 5. You also state that SHP informed my wife and me that GLA Housing First was a pilot (i.e. temporary) scheme. The first time SHP informed us that GLA Housing First was a pilot scheme was almost four months into our tenancy, in an email dated 4 September 2014, stating: I am writing to inform you of the current situation with GLA Housing First. This scheme was set up as a 3 year Pilot and therefore this will come to an end in March Page 3 of 8
2015. GLA have informed us that the scheme will not continue after this date due to lack of funding. We have been asked to begin exit strategies for all those who access the service. Clearing House has asked that clients who want to remain in their accommodation and who are managing their tenancies well, are referred back to the clearing house for them to assess. They will then assess these clients to ensure they feel they are able to manage the tenancy with TST support. 6. When we signed our two-year tenancy agreement on 17 May 2014, we were correctly informed that we had the possibility to extend this agreement beyond the expiry of the initial term. It was only as a result of this information that we took the significant decision to spend on furnishings the deposit we had for a private sector flat. Our flat came without any furnishings whatsoever: we did not have a bed, a table, anything to sit on, not even a cutlery item or cooking utensil of any kind in the kitchen. SHP subsequently reimbursed us £300 after we submitted copies of receipts for purchases, but this barely covered the cost of a double bed, bedclothes and basic bedroom furnishings. In order to render the flat habitable, we even had to install shelves that had been removed from the kitchen and replace curtain rails, curtains and net curtains that had been removed from the balcony and bedroom windows. 7. Your response to my Letter Before Claim clearly upholds GLA Housing First’s referral of my wife and me to Clearing House/TST in contravention of the “secure exit plan” stipulated in the 2014/15 Housing First funding agreement between the GLA and SHP at Schedule 2, Part A: Milestone Schedule. According to a study titled “‘Doing it Already’: Stakeholder Perceptions of Housing First in the UK” (Heriot-Watt University, 2012), the Clearing House scheme departs from the key principles of Housing First in a number of significant ways. Two deviations are particularly noteworthy: Service provision in the Clearing House scheme is “time-limited” in that “eligibility for flats terminates when individuals are deemed to no longer require support to live independently” (page 192). This also means that when you write “Clearing House/TST do not have any current basis for concern that you are unable to manage your tenancy”, you are in effect stating that we do not qualify for Clearing House/TST because we do not require support to live independently. Under the Clearing House Scheme “clients are required to comply with holistic support plans” (page 192). This is in contrast to Housing First which is noted for its lack of conditionality regarding client engagement. 8. Taking these two deviations into account, it is clear that not only does the Clearing House scheme not provide the permanent accommodation and voluntary support characteristic of Housing First, but we do not qualify for the scheme since we are able to sustain our tenancy without support. 9. On 21 September 2014, SHP sought my signature on a support plan that stated both my wife’s blog (at http://network-of-those-abused-by-church.blogspot.co.uk) and our Church and State website (at http://churchandstate.org.uk) appear "to demonstrate” our Page 4 of 8
thinking, that we "appear very grandiose” in our thinking, and that we both “demonstrate symptoms of mental ill health". This support plan was subsequently withdrawn. Under the Clearing House scheme however, my wife and I would have faced eviction for noncompliance with such a support plan (see paragraph 7 above), thus adding further weight to our argument that a referral to Clearing House/TST does not provide us with an exit plan that is secure. 10. Furthermore, I have a hearing at the County Court at Central London on 8 May 2015 against SHP under the Data Protection Act 1998, challenging their claim that we consented to declarations for online referral that we are paying our own salaries as employees of Network for Church Monitoring (N4CM) and that we are both mentally ill, and despite our photographic evidence to the contrary. These financial and mental health accusations were refuted by N4CM Chairman Dr Stephen Mumford, founder and President of the Center for Research on Population and Security in North Carolina, USA, but to no avail. Dr Mumford attached with his mental health rebuttal two of our references for second jobs in care, one of which was written by a Harvard educated MD (then) based in London, stating: I personally know Declan and Lola Heavey. I can, in good faith, recommend them as caregivers to an elderly person in need. If they were offered such a position, I am confident that they would carry it out with more than the usual commitment and care. 11. As you correctly point out in your letter, my wife and I do not need support to manage our tenancy. Our needs are related to the high levels of opposition and disruption we have encountered since moving to England in 2003 from Ireland to run a network for church monitoring. Consider the following: Through no fault of our own, we have been forced to sleep rough on the streets of London for almost 4 years in total – from 4 November 2006 to 13 July 2009 and again from 14 April 2013 to 15 May 2014 – where we were subjected to, among other things, threats and intimidation by police officers. Only in February of this year I was awarded a consolatory payment of £100 from the Department for Work and Pensions for gross inconvenience resulting from the failure of the Department to issue me with a correct P60 for the tax year 2013/14. Such a consolatory payment is only made in very exceptional circumstances where the errors made are so severe or over such a protracted period of time that it causes the customer clear difficulties in the pursuit of benefits or pursuing a justified complaint. On 27 March 2015 our landlord Family Mosaic Housing Association awarded me the capital sum of £225 by way of statutory compensation for six months of delays with repair work following a significant ceiling leak in our bedroom. On 2 April our local councillor, Cllr James Beckles, referred my case to the Housing Ombudsman following the insistence of Family Mosaic to pay this compensation into our rent account notwithstanding that our rent is paid in full by Housing Benefit. The Page 5 of 8
Ombudsman has claimed that Cllr Beckles' referral was never received, and a second email from him dated 15 April 2015 has not been actioned as yet. 12. It is clear from the above, leaving aside the fact that we do not qualify for the Clearing House scheme, that your decision on behalf of the GLA to uphold our referral to Clearing House/TST is unlawful because such a referral cannot provide us with a secure exit plan from Housing First. This is because the Clearing House scheme departs from the House First model on a number of fronts, most notably that provision of accommodation is not permanent, and is contingent on evidence of ongoing need for support to live independently and compliance with holistic support plans. 13. Furthermore, your ill-considered response to my Letter Before Claim constitutes a threat to life taking into account the following range of factors: (a) we took the significant decision to spend on furnishings the deposit we had for a private sector flat (see paragraph 6 above); (b) I am in my mid-fifties and while living on the streets was last year diagnosed with asthma, which is a chronic or lifelong disease that can be serious, even life threatening; and (c) back on the streets we will be restricted to sleeping in buses despite my medical condition, as we had been prior to coming off the streets as a result of an excessive use of force by police to move us on from our sleeping pitch. 14. By way of background, we were previously evicted from a political ‘safe house’ because the live-in landlady’s ex-husband, a consultant psychiatrist, required our flat for somebody with a mental illness. This was the same house former MI5 whistleblower David Shayler lived in for a couple of years until 2007, just before he declared himself to be the Messiah and was then ridiculed in the press and media for changing his name to Delores Kane. He has never regained his normal self. 6. The details of the action that the defendant is expected to take The alternative remedy to judicial review is that the following steps are taken: a) To revoke your decision to uphold our referral to Clearing House/TST. b) To commit to a full review and re-assessment of this case. 7. The details of the legal advisers, if any, dealing with this claim I am dealing with the claim myself. 8. The details of any interested parties SHP
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9. The details of any information and documentation sought You are asked to provide the following information within 14 days in accordance with the judicial review pre-action protocol. You are reminded that in responding to this letter you must comply with your duty of candour. This duty requires due diligence in: (a) investigating what material is relevant to this claim; and, (b) disclosing that material where it is relevant or assists me, including on some as yet unpleaded ground. A failure to comply with the duty of candour when providing your response to this letter may result in costs sanctions. The duty of candour is reinforced by paragraphs 6 and 16(d) of the Judicial Review PreAction Protocol which provide that you must enclose any relevant documentation requested by me with your response and that where you ignore this requirement the court may impose sanctions, for example costs sanctions. Accordingly, in your response, you are asked to confirm that you have investigated what material is relevant to this claim and to disclose that material in or with your response. In addition, I would ask you to ensure that documentation that demonstrates that GLA Housing First has ended and will not be continued is provided with your response in compliance with your pre-action disclosure duties. 10. Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) I do not consider that this matter is suitable for an alternative form of resolution. If you disagree please let me have your reasons and your proposals. 11. The address for reply and service of court documents Please send all future correspondence on this matter to: Declan Heavey 71 Queen’s Road West London E13 0PE 12. Proposed reply date I ask that you provide a substantive reply to this letter within the standard 14 day protocol period, that is by close of business on 20 May 2015. 13. Additional information I put you on notice that I will bring any legal proceedings that are necessary to lead to a just determination of this case. I will also apply for compensatory and punitive damages in any proceedings that are necessitated.
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Yours sincerely
Declan Heavey Mobile: 078 8043 7681 Email: dheavey@gmail.com
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