Melanie Dirom, associate, Brabners Chaffe Street
Killer’s family removed
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How Riverside Group secured a high-profile possession order
We recently acted for Riverside Group for a claim for possession against Janette Mercer, the mother of Sean Mercer (who shot dead schoolboy Rhys Jones in Liverpool in August 2007).
Initially the claim for possession was thought to be very narrow, based only on the murder conviction, but by taking time to investigate the family’s history, involvement in gang culture, and bringing together various complaints, Riverside was able to rely on allegations against the whole household.
Our evidence showed the family was still coming to the attention of the police in January 2009, nine months after Sean Mercer had been charged and remanded in youth detention.
A five-day trial at Liverpool County Court, which involved 24 witnesses, including 19 police officers, resulted in Riverside obtaining an immediate possession order and sent out an extremely strong message to residents.
In such cases, the court not only needs to be satisfied that a ground for possession has been made out, but also that it is reasonable to make a possession order.
Key considerations include the impact of the anti-social behaviour on the wider community, which in this case had been devastating.
The court will always look at whether conditions could be placed on the tenant to keep them in their tenancy, as eviction from a property is the last resort, but in this case the court felt that the community had suffered enough at the hands of the defendant and her household.
The first instinct may be to act quickly, but social landlords must be cautious when issuing possession proceedings as a ‘knee-jerk’ reaction.
Landlords must look at the bigger picture and deal with the behaviour of the tenant and the household as a whole.
So what can other social landlords take from this case?
- Plan your approach. Don’t be rushed into a quick solution - work with a legal team as soon as you can to make a full and frank assessment of your objectives.
- Establish partnerships early. By working in conjunction with organisations such as the police, you may be able to build up a much stronger case by producing evidence relating to convictions.
- Ensure your grounds for possession are as rigorous as possible. Consider all the grounds available to you in your claim for possession - check how many can be relied upon to strengthen the case.
- Consider your communication. These types of cases will often generate publicity from local and national press, which can demonstrate that a social landlord is taking a zero-tolerance approach to all anti-social tenants.
It may also be appropriate to use this in your tenant communications - either in web updates or newsletters.
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Readers' comments (9)
kass | 07/12/2009 12:49 pm
This just shows that instead of being proactive and preventing victimisations landlords and police are only reactive and wait someone to die before taking EFFECTIVE action. Asnd then they brag that they have no-tolerance for antisocial behaviour. the clear message here is unless someone dies they are not going to do much about it.... (Oh, you do not have just to die, you have to be big news too, because god knows if social landlords and police ever do anything about those who die but whose deaths do not make headlines)
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ILAG | 10/12/2009 3:32 am
"Initially the claim for possession was thought to be very narrow, based only on the murder conviction"
So is the implication that "only" murder was not really enough reason to evict and there should really be more offences on the table in order to secure possession? Really? On what planet do the judiciary live?
"A five-day trial at Liverpool County Court, which involved 24 witnesses, including 19 police officers"
So how much did all that cost the taxpayer once the HA's costs (HA's are funded by the State let us remember) and legal aid for the scumbag concerned is taken into account? High five figures no doubt.
"The court will always look at whether conditions could be placed on the tenant to keep them in their tenancy, as eviction from a property is the last resort"
Ahh, the bleeding heart supine judiciary who consistently defend the indefensible whilst blissfully living miles away from them. Why should eviction be the last resort? It is the legal establishment who have pushed this agenda, much to the detriment of communities and the enrichment of their colleagues in private practise with their hefty bills paid courtesy of you and I.
"The first instinct may be to act quickly, but social landlords must be cautious when issuing possession proceedings as a ‘knee-jerk’ reaction"
Again, why? Who benefits from slow-to-act landlords and who suffers?
Remember that, in the history of social housing, these secure tenancies are recent developments, brought in, bizarrely, by the Thatcher government. All throughout the "golden age" of council housing, from the end of the war right through to the 1980's, all tenancies could be terminated on 28 days notice. No appeal. No court cases. No overpaid lawyers. No bleeding heart judiciary to interfere. Generally people behaved themselves. Or else, out you go.
The ridiculous costs and legal difficulties involved in removing feral scum with secure tenancies so preventing them causing chaos for their neighbours really must be addressed. There is real argument here for the scrapping of secure tenancies and reverting back to the "golden age" 28 days notice tenancy. Clearly such a move would be resisted by the legal establishment as they won't earn any more fees from prosecuting or defending the indefensible (they get paid both ways remember) but it sure would allow social landlords to clean up their estates. Eventually the recidivists will get the message that their behaviour will get them evicted. Again and again and again. This is a powerful argument for the removal of secure tenancies and housing professionals would doubtless be empowered to actually act against and remove the 5% of tenants who take up 95% of their time, resulting in better neighbourhoods for all. And the money saved in legal fees could spent on...building more homes!
ILAG
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Joe Halewood | 10/12/2009 8:51 am
In order to evict the 5% of bad tenants we should take away the rights of the 95% of good tenants. That sums up ILAGs main point here and that view is a nonsensical one. Take away the legal protection and rights of the overwhelming good majority and place the decision to evict with the subjective views of a housing officer! That can’t be right.
More practically it would probably lead to higher legal costs as each and every decision would be challenged under other laws such as Human Rights Act etc., and so would lead to more legal costs for social landlords as ILAGs ‘feral scum’ would probably be legal aided.
The law has accelerated eviction procedures on rent arrears (Ground 8) that are very infrequently used. Social landlords are loathe to use Ground 8 though as the recent Weaver case made clear the judiciary don’t have a problem with it – after all it is the law. Yet this is the only accelerated eviction ground we have in effect and the lack of accelerated eviction grounds for matters such as crime and nuisance (or the misnomer that is ASB) may well be worthy of consideration.
There is little dissention that ‘ASB’ should be tackled more strongly and more quickly yet a return to the good old days (ventriloquists and the radio anyone?) is not the way to tackle this. Getting the Police to do their job that we all already pay for is a better start and a better way to achieve the deterrent factor ILAG is seeking
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ILAG | 11/12/2009 1:54 am
"Getting the Police to do their job that we all already pay for is a better start and a better way to achieve the deterrent factor ILAG is seeking"
Yes, absolutely. We discussed and agreed on this in your earlier post on ASB in the forums. Getting the police to agree - now that's a different matter. The target driven culture that considers a caution for possession of a joint to be "solved" crime equal to solving a murder clearly is not helping here. Soft targets are easier to go after than doing actual useful police work so consequently they don't bother to do useful police work anymore.
In my informal discussions with housing officers and councilors, the refusal of the judiciary to evict is often cited as major disincentive to bring cases for possession on the grounds of ASB. More often, as the criminal families are also usually in arrears, they prefer to go for those grounds instead as these are easier to get through - which is bizarre if you think about it. Criminal tenants are far more problematic to their communities than tenants in arrears yet it is the latter that are easier to remove. By the way you are right to place "ASB" in quotation marks as it really should be called what it is was always called until this ridiculous monicker came along ie basic old fashioned criminality.
Anyway, trying to change the attitudes of the judiciary, even assuming target driven policing is dropped and they resume their traditional roles and responsibilities (ie catching criminals and not passing the buck to RSLs) is like turning around an oil tanker. It ain't gonna happen overnight. Changes to the tenancy (and to allocations of course) that enable an RSL to sidestep the judiciary when it comes to managing who lives in their properties are not unreasonable desires. I'm not sure what moral right a judge has to insist a problem tenant remain in a property that they do not own in perpetuity against the wishes of the lawful owner of that property and to the detriment of their neighbours. In that sense the secure tenancy is bizarre instrument that is not found in other areas of contract law. It seems to confer a good deal of rights with very few responsibilities and is very difficult to revoke once granted. In this sense, and given it's relatively recent development historically speaking, it is not difficult to see why policy makers are questioning whether this particular form of tenancy is either desirable or sustainable in the long run.
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john souray | 11/12/2009 7:57 am
The intellectual and moral poverty of the racist ILAG (who believes that people with white skins should receive preferential housing allocation because other people are not "indigenous", and who chortlingly likes to describe this as "wacism") is exposed as soon as one asks the question: "well, where are these evicted people - the families, for example, of murderers, even though they themselves are not the ones guilty of the crime - supposed to go and live?".
That of course is not a question that troubles this NIMBY ethnic cleanser. His answer is "export them to Hull". Anywhere, really, as long as they're not next to him in Islington.
Most contributors to this site have a rather more difficult and complex task in from of them. To find policies that work everywhere, including Hull. And to find solutions to the problems; not just sweep them into a different corner.
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ILAG | 11/12/2009 2:08 pm
If you cannot contribute positively to the debate without name calling and the usual tired old lefty labels it is altogether better to shut up. The vast majority of people in this country believe it is entirely reasonable to house their own indigenous citizens before their house foreigners. Even recent immigrants posting on these forums have acknowledged that. If that doesnt fit with your NeoMarxist ideology then tough. Anyone who disagrees with this is labelled "wacist". Pathetic. Grow up.
In terms of where this criminal family should go, why not ask their neighbours? Prison is probably what they will say. That may not be reasonable or practical but it is doubtless the feeling on the ground.
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john souray | 11/12/2009 3:04 pm
QED.
Just in case anyone is in any doubt who ILAG thinks should be housed first:
"ILAG | Fri, 19 Jun 2009 08:30 GMT
3. Well white English people are the incumbent population in England, like it or not, and so should have first dibs on housing."
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Joe Halewood | 11/12/2009 3:30 pm
ILAG - its not reasonable or practical or even likely because the police dont get involved. That is the rub. Though you miss Johns very practical point as where should they go.
The LMH case I reported here last week is not unusual and emphasises the issue. There a tenant was evicted. He then moved in with his family in the same street and his crimes increased in severity to include mugging, extortion, abuse and more. As such eviction is not an adequate sanction. Further, the lack of police action for such crimes mean the problems continue. Moreover, the police not getting involved still places social tenant victims in a worse situation that other tenants and owner occupiers.
It is typical for an evicted tenant to stay in the same area in a private let after they have been evicted from social housing. (They could even end up in Islington couldnt they?)
Hence eviction - even if your proposals of removing security of tenure for all - is not sufficient to stop the crimes is it? Its also not about allocation of properties either as that only concerns entrants into social housing - so a seemingly perfect tenant could be given a property and move a Charles Mansonesque person in the next day.
The problem is dealing with criminal activity end of. As is proven and demonstrated time and time again eviction just moves the problem on that like above can be to same street - so eviction is not a deterrent. Only police action is a deterrent - yet they simply couldnt be a***d about what they may term 'low level' crime and/or just leave this to social landlords to deal with.
So ILAG i agree lets ignore the name-calling and look at real matters - Your proposals cant work and could in point of fact leave the situation worse as in the LMH case I have commented on above. Its not about the difficulty of getting rid of bad tenants or even 3 million background checks on admission to social housing, its about bad social tenants being treated the same as bad private tenants and bad owner-occupiers are - by the police and the criminal justice system.
Social housing sector needs to wake up and smell the coffee
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ILAG | 11/12/2009 5:54 pm
Yes well the article did state:
"Our evidence showed the family was still coming to the attention of the police in January 2009, nine months after Sean Mercer had been charged and remanded in youth detention."
Which is legalese for saying that this feral scum family were up to their neck in criminal activity before and after one of their vile offspring murdered someone but we just ignored it until some serious happened because they lived in social housing and you get what you pay for.
Ultimately we come back to the failings of the police to do their job backed up with the perception of the judiciary that social housing is where all the recidivists end up and so neighbouring tenants and leaseholders should somehow expect to have to put up with a certain level of criminal behaviour as social housing is the tenure of last resort. This unspoken belief on behalf on the judiciary is doubtless contributing to the problem and, between them and the police, creates a two tier system of justice.
Ultimately criminals belong in prison, not in social housing. Prison doesn't reform of course but it keeps the rest of society temporarily safe from predators. I guess building more prisons is the only real solution. Classifying crime by criminals who happen to live in social housing as "ASB" leads directly to preventable tragedies such as this and amply illustrates why RSLs should have absolutely nothing to do with the whole buck passing fad.
If the police can be persuaded to actually start doing their job again, so that the law applies equally to social housing estates as well as to leafy suburbs, then the new weapon of premises closure orders can be swiftly deployed to remove criminal tenants from RSL properties and side step the legal nightmare otherwise faced by an RSL trying to get their property back through the courts. There have been a number of these used in London recently and the courts have tended to grant possession once the three month closure order ends and the problem has already been removed. It is down to RSLs and local communities to constantly remind the police of their obligation to protect them and use the powers granted to them to actually do their job for a change.
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