AA v Southwark - a local authority scandal

Summary

1.         On 25^th November 2014 LBS’s Housing & Community Safety Scrutiny Sub-Committee met to consider the High Court judgment in AA v LB Southwark [2014] EWHC 500 (QB). The Strategic Director of Housing and Community Services produced a report for the Sub-Committee. The report displayed the same unlawful and callous approach as identified in the High Court and, if accepted, LBS would not learn any lessons from this episode, subjecting all tenants of LBS to the risk of the same kind of treatment in future.

2.         This briefing summarises the High Court judgment and then addresses the inaccuracies and flaws in the Strategic Director’s report.

3.         Further commentary on the judgment can be seen on the Nearly Legal housing law blog and Housing Action Southwark & Lambeth.

Judgment

4.         AA’s claim against LBS was heard over 6 days in the High Court on 18^th-20^th, 28^th-29^th November and 23^rd December 2013 and HHJ Anthony Thornton QC formally handed down his written judgment on 13^th October 2014. The judgment starts with a 9-paragraph summary and then proceeds for 84 pages and 299 paragraphs.

5.         Both the trial and the judgment are unusually long, demonstrating the thoroughness and comprehensive nature of the judge’s approach. Aside from a few typos, the judgment clearly sets out the law and evidence supporting each of his conclusions and all the factual assertions below are taken from the judgment unless specifically indicated otherwise.

6.         LBS’s unlawful actions and failures came in three parts:-

a.    Officers conspired to evict AA unlawfully and to destroy his belongings.

b.    The same officers tried to cover up what they had done.

c.     The rest of LBS then reacted in callous disregard for AA’s plight, misleading the courts and using every procedural issue they could to block AA’s search for a remedy, without giving any thought to assisting or compensating AA.

7.         There was one aspect of the case not addressed in the judgment but which is highly relevant. The first two officers involved started acting in breach of LBS policies and procedures before bringing in other officers to help. They knew their fellow officers would help despite their obviously not complying with LBS’s policies and procedures, let alone with the law. They were also not deterred by the possibility of disciplinary sanctions. This strongly implies that there is a culture within LBS that the kind of behaviour involved here is not regarded as wrong and may even be encouraged in some circumstances.

The Facts

6.         AA is a Sudanese refugee. He was a tenant of LBS from 1989 until his eviction on 23^rd April 2013. He spent most of his time in charitable work for Sudanese children. He built up rent arrears because he failed to pay some of the shortfall between his housing benefit and the rent and there were breaks in his benefit which weren't always made up when it resumed.

7.         On 13^th November 2006 LBS obtained a possession order on alleged arrears of £1,551.86. AA did not attend. In fact, according to a letter dated 19^th February 2007 from Jobcentre Plus (found on LBS’s tenancy file for AA), direct deductions had been made from AA’s benefits and paid to LBS. However, they were not recorded on AA’s rent account. Had this information been available to the court on 20^th February 2007 when AA applied to suspend the order, the court would have set aside the order as only a small sum of about £218 was outstanding. Instead, the order was postponed on terms AA continue to pay towards the arrears.

8.         LBS sought a warrant to evict but it was struck out on 12^th September 2007. This was the only time AA was represented by solicitors. No documents were ever disclosed in relation to this order.

9.         The order of 20^th February 2007 required LBS to apply for permission to fix a date for possession. LBS applied and were granted it on 1^st July 2008. Warrants were suspended on 4^th September 2008 (when the arrears peaked at £3,201.87), 4^th November 2008, 6^th May 2010 and 10^th September 2010, the last occasion by consent (i.e. with LBS’s agreement). Again, however, if direct deductions had been recorded, there would have been no arrears on 10^th May 2010 and the suspended order for possession would have been discharged.

10.       Nothing happened for two years although AA’s rent account showed the arrears increasing, other than one letter sent in 2011 which was not followed up. Christine Okwara became the income officer for AA’s tenancy from June 2012. It appears that she and her line manager, Brian Davis, took a dim view of the increasing arrears and decided that AA should be evicted. They further decided that they would do so at any cost, even if it meant breaking the law and failing to follow LBS’s Housing Management Eviction Procedure.

11.       LBS applied for a warrant on 22^nd February 2013 from the court office. It was issued on 26^th February 2013 for execution on 23^rd April 2013. LBS did not apply for the court’s permission, as required by the court rules for an order more than 6 years old. It is only in exceptional circumstances that the court should exercise its discretion to permit a warrant to be issued outside the 6 years. Therefore, it is a very serious matter to deprive a defendant of an opportunity for a court review and why it will ordinarily be an abuse of process for a warrant to be issued and executed without permission. A warrant issued without permission on an order more than 6 years old is invalid and will be set aside even if executed.

12.       Breaches of LBS’s Housing Management Eviction Procedure included:

a.    Ms Okwara and/or Mr Davis deliberately suppressed the SEVR (an internal form used to approve evictions) in order to suppress general awareness that there had been a failure to apply to a judge for permission to apply for a warrant. They did so in order not to incur the delay and possible inability to proceed to an eviction that would inevitably result from the need to initiate fresh possession proceedings. They further agreed deliberately to misrepresent the situation to the court so that AA's stay application would fail.

b.    On receiving notification from the court on 23^rd February 2013 of the eviction date on 23^rd April 2013, Ms Okwara should have delivered an EVDA pre-eviction letter to AA. However, the EVDA letter was only dated and then sent or delivered to AA, if was sent or delivered at all (the judge concluded there was no reliable evidence that it was) 6 weeks later and only 8 days before eviction.

c.     Ms Okwara recorded on iWorld (the information system used by her department) that she made a pre-eviction visit to the property but she left a calling card. Under the LBS Housing Management Eviction Procedure, when there is no-one home, the officer has to highlight the case to a resident officer to assist with contact and make another visit. Ms Okwara did not do so. When this was queried in preparation for a court hearing, Ms Okwara did not answer.

d.    The judge concluded there was good evidence that Ms Okwara deliberately delayed her pre-eviction home visit so that AA would have insufficient time to respond to his pending eviction.

e.    AA was in the property at the time of the home visit. The judge concluded that Ms Okwara had deliberately avoided him on that day and on every day between then and the hearing of AA’s stay application and at court before and after the hearing.

f.      Another officer, Johanna Ashley, should have conducted a pre-eviction visit to establish if there were likely to be issues with storing the contents. She was informed by Ms Okwara of the date of eviction but took no action, despite, with her 31 years’ experience, knowing what was expected of her. She also had appointments on the morning of the eviction. Neither she nor Ms Okwara arranged for another resident officer to attend instead. Their e-mails should have appeared on iWorld but only came to light when Southwark's investigator, Kennethy Matthews, insisted on them. The judge concluded that the two had decided together that no resident officer would attend the eviction and they would send each other e-mails to cover this up.

g.     The panel who dealt with Ms Ashley’s disciplinary hearing found that she had failed to follow the Goods Storage or Disposal Procedures since, amongst other failings, she had failed to carry out a pre-eviction visit and also had failed to re-arrange her time so that she was available to attend the eviction. Ms Okwara likewise was found to have failed to chase up Ms Ashley or her team to ensure that a resident officer carried out a pre-eviction visit and also attended the eviction. Ms Ashley then attempted to cover up her failures by suggesting there were no storage issues, which contributed to AA's belongings being destroyed.

h.    On the first morning of the trial LBS also produced a letter dated 18^th April 2013. It was a standard letter to issue prior to a first possession hearing and was inappropriate here. If AA received it, he would have gained the mistaken impression that LBS were prepared to negotiate. The judge doubted its authenticity too.

i.      Ms Okwara was conducting a DIY eviction on behalf of LBS and she had rights of audience for that purpose. That required her to assist the court, to provide the court with accurate and full information about the tenancy, the tenant and the breaches founding the application for possession and to make a full note of the judge’s reasons for his decision. In fact, she provided no detail or documents, failed to inform the judge about the strengths of AA’s case for a stay, was not prepared to enter into any dialogue with him about the arrears and had failed to comply with LBS’s Housing Management Eviction Procedure.

j.      Mr Lammas, the carpenter from an outside contractor used to secure the property on eviction, claimed he went ahead with the eviction while AA was still at court and without a resident officer present because he had been told AA had caused trouble at court to the extent that he had been thrown out. However, Ms Okwara told Mr Matthews that AA had caused no trouble at court and she had never had any problems talking to him. Therefore, Mr Lammas had been told to give a false excuse.

k.     Ms Ashley, as AA’s personal officer, would have been expected to offer AA advice and practical support in an attempt to assist in the successful resolution of the problems that had occurred without the need for an eviction. She did not even attempt to do so.

l.      Even after the eviction, Ms Ashley still retained pastoral obligations which extended to advising him how he could belatedly rescue his tenancy, retrieve his possessions, seek alternative accommodation since he was street homeless and obtain temporary financial assistance given that he had no access to any funds. In the days following his eviction, AA attempted to contact Ms Okwara and Ms Ashley on numerous occasions, including directly by phone and by going into LBS’s offices at Harris Street, Queen’s Road, Tooley Street and to the Peckham One Stop Shop.  On each occasion however, each of them either put the phone down without speaking to him or did not answer the phone.

13.       AA was evicted on 23^rd April 2013 while he was at court making a last ditch application to stop it. The events on the day of the eviction were the direct result of concerted action linked by a series of telephone calls between Mr Davis, Ms Okwara, Ms Yusuff, the bailiff and the carpenter. The entire contents of AA's flat were removed on about 25 April 2013 and immediately taken to a refuse disposal facility and destroyed.

14.       Ms Ashley was aware the eviction had taken place and was desperate to cover-up her non-attendance at it. Mr Davis, likewise, was desperate to create the impression that no resident officer was present at the eviction because there was no need for one under LBS’s Housing Management Eviction Procedure he was going through the motions of following. Ms Okwara was desperate to make it appear that the non-attendance of Ms Ashley at the eviction was entirely the fault of the resident officer responsible. As a result, each sent out an email that they must have subsequently bitterly regretted sending. Ms Ashley sent out an email wrongly stating there were “no storage issues”. At paras 181-2 of his judgment, the judge quoted and analysed an e-mail from Mr Davis sent on 24 April 2013. The analysis gives a flavour of the cover-up and so is quoted in full:

While I am happy that this tenant lost his appeal at court (1)  and the arrangements we had in place beforehand (Christiana [Okwara] attend court to oppose appeal and Lara [Yusuff] to wait at the property until the outcome is revealed (2)) the serious cause for concern is the TTI not being signed (3).

Once the tenant lost the appeal at court and decided just to hand back the keys at Harris Street (rather than be evicted by the bailiff) why did we not inform (sic – the words “voids and” appear to be missing) get him to sign a TTI (4). On iWorld there is not even a note stating “tnt came into office and handed in keys etc etc”. The problem now is this tenant in 1 month or 2 month time could come back and make a false claim that we illegally evicted him and seek compensation. We have no proof to say otherwise because we got no TTI (5).

I’m working at home tomorrow but I need you both to come to Tooley Street on Friday so we can discuss in person (6). I will book a room and place an appointment in your calendar.

15.       The numbers refer to the judge’s comments:-

(1)  It is wholly inappropriate for an income officer to be “happy” that a tenant has lost his stay application and has been evicted. This shows that Mr Davis had a personal interest in obtaining AA’s eviction. It is particularly revealing of his state of mind that he is happy at what he knows to have been an unlawful eviction and it supports the consideration that this eviction had been successfully engineered for an ulterior purpose.

(2)  Mr Davis knew that Ms Yusuff had never been to the property and had waited in her car until he instructed her to move to Harris Street in order to receive the keys from the carpenter. Furthermore, the statement that Ms Yusuff was to wait at the property “until the outcome (of AA’s application) is revealed” is contrary to what he told Mr Matthews at his first interview which was that he had asked Ms Yusuff to attend the eviction in place of Ms Okwara who would be in LCC opposing AA’s last-minute application to stay the eviction. This is the first of the passages which appear to be an attempt to mislead and to cover up his and his colleagues wrong-doing.

(3)  The passages suggesting AA should have signed a TTI were also intended to mislead. A TTI was only used when a tenant voluntarily surrendered possession having removed all his possessions from the flat. Thus, any relevant officer, on reading this email, would assume that AA had voluntarily left the flat with his possessions and that there had been a failure to obtain a record of that by means of a signed TTI. These passages must therefore have been intended to mislead anyone reading this email. It was not posted onto iWorld but its contents were subsequently passed around the income team and it, and Ms Ashley’s email the previous day, led to a number of officers declining to assist AA in his attempts to obtain both reinstatement and a return of his property.

(4)  Mr Davis was well aware of the fact that AA had not come into the office, had not surrendered his tenancy without involving the bailiff and could not have signed a TTI since, as Mr Davis knew or ought to have known, his possessions remained in the flat.

(5)  This passage appears to be suggesting that Mr Davis and his colleagues should put together a false story to cover up AA’s illegal eviction who did indeed subsequently start proceedings of the kind suggested. If Mr Davis or his colleagues had then given evidence to support any false story that had been devised in the proposed cover-up meeting, they would have committed perjury.

(6)  This meeting between Mr Davis, Ms Okwara and Ms Maresch was both collusive and conspiratorial since it was clearly intended to discuss how to cover-up the wrongdoing that had occurred on 23 April 2013. A similar cover-up meeting appears to have occurred when Mr Davis, Ms Okwara and Ms Yusuff met on 31 May 2013 just after it had been announced that a full investigation would take place into the destruction of AA’s possessions. Following the meeting and self-evidently as a consequence of it, each of the three produced an anodyne and highly misleading account of the eviction which appeared to exculpate all three of them of all responsibility and blame for those unlawful events.

16.       Mr Davis, Ms Okwara and Ms Yusuff conspired to agree the “party line”, Ms Ashley e-mailed each of them to reach a consensus and Ms Okwara and Ms Ashley agreed to avoid all AA’s attempts to contact them. They then persuaded Ms Maresch to toe the party line that AA had the eviction coming since he was such a volatile and unacceptable person. They also apparently agreed not to assist in the court hearings that followed and would pass as little information to LBS's Complex Cases Team as possible.

17.       All the officers involved knew, or had turned a blind eye to the fact, that AA had been unlawfully evicted and that his possessions were still in the flat despite his having been evicted and that they were about to be removed and destroyed. When they learned about his possessions being destroyed, none of them had the decency to raise it with their colleagues. Had the alarm been raised, an urgent and immediate investigation would have revealed the unlawful eviction and it would still have been possible to restore him and compensate him for his loss.

18.       When AA tried to contact Gerri Scott, Strategic Director of Housing, her PA was wrongly told that AA had “been in the past abusing and threatening to both Southwark and court staff (including judges!)”. It was also claimed the eviction was after a long and protracted battle when, in fact, due to LBS’s deliberate failures to follow its own procedures, it had lasted no more than 5 days.

19.       AA enlisted the help of Cllrs Sloane and Brown. They were sympathetic and wrote to the relevant personnel but none appear to have been answered, investigated or followed up. He also asked the police to intervene but LBS fobbed off their enquiries too.

20.       At a High Court hearing on 1^st May 2013 and at a county court hearing on 14^th May 2013 LBS gave undertakings to allow AA access to his belongings despite some officers within LBS knowing they had already been disposed of. If LBS had informed the court at these hearings of the destruction of belongings and the abuse of process, AA would have been reinstated. 

21.       AA was told on 17^th May 2013 that all his possessions had been removed from the flat and destroyed. This was the first time that he had been told of this destruction although it had occurred on about 25^th April 2013 and had been known about by relevant officers from that time onwards. On 24 May 2013 AA was presented with a letter stating: “Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this may be causing.” This is the only apology that AA has ever received from LBS. LBS have taken no subsequent action to investigate AA’s needs or to offer him assistance or to take steps to investigate whether his eviction was lawfully carried out or to reinstate him in his flat or to provide practical assistance from the resident officers or to pay (without proceedings having been started) recompense for destroying his property or to ameliorate his street homelessness or to help him to replace his possessions or to re-accommodate him.

22.       A senior LBS officer, Mr Hilder, found out on 16^th May 2013 about the destruction of AA’s belongings and initiated an investigation by Mr Matthews but otherwise did nothing to address AA’s plight. When giving evidence at trial, Mr Hilder had no genuine concern for AA and gave the impression that he was content to rest on the payment of £6,190 already paid as being sufficient to compensate AA for the loss of all his possessions and being made street homeless. He had not studied LBS's investigator's report and appeared to think the eviction had been lawful. In short, he appeared to display a "remarkable callousness".

23.       Mr Davis and Ms Okwara told a series of lies to LBS's investigator, Mr Matthews, about the telephone calls they made during the eviction. They were only caught out when presented with mobile phone records contradicting what they had previously said.

24.       Disciplinary hearings involving Mr Davis, Ms Okwara, Miss Ashley and Ms Yusuff were heard in October and November 2013 and the internal hearing informed those officers of its decision on 30^th October 2013 in Mr Davis’ case, 8^th November 2013 in Ms Yusuff’s case and 15^th November 2013 in Ms Ashley and Ms Okwara’s cases. Therefore, there was no impediment to any of them being witnesses at the trial later in November but they weren't.

The Judge’s Decision

25.       As well as making the aforementioned findings of fact, the judge upheld AA’s claims against LBS:-

a.    Tortious conspiracy - the misuse of eviction policies, the failure to obtain permission to issue a warrant, abuse of process and unlawful covering-up.

b.    Misfeasance in public office. This and tortious conspiracy are deliberate torts. Unlike other categories of legal breaches listed below, they only exist where the wrongdoer intends to act unlawfully. It is very rare for such a claim to be upheld and a judge of HHJ Anthony Thornton QC's seniority and experience would only do so if the evidence existed to establish it clearly.

c.     Failure to follow internal policies and procedures which were intended to ensure that any execution of a warrant for possession was fairly, safely and lawfully undertaken. AA had a legitimate expectation that the policies and procedures would be followed.

d.    Unlawful eviction/Breaches of terms of tenancy, in particular the covenant for quiet enjoyment.

e.    Breach of the Torts (Interference with Goods) Act 1977 – LBS admitted this. They made interim payments of £6,190, £950 and £5,000 pursuant to orders of 18^th July 2013, 5^th November 2013 and 14^th March 2014 and have since settled for a further undisclosed sum.

f.      Negligence in failing to take care of AA’s belongings.

g.     Breaches of the right to home and private life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. (In truth, this added little to the breaches of the common law but the threshold for a breach of the ECHR is high so this emphasises the seriousness of what happened.

26.       AA claimed the following remedies for the above breaches of the law (although the judge did not rule on them because LBS settled with AA):

a.    General damages for distress and inconvenience, including over one year spent street homeless.

b.    Aggravated damages. This is technically not a separate category but is awarded when there are particular aggravating circumstances which would increase a claimant’s loss, such as a cover-up and deliberate reluctance to ameliorate or compensate for the consequences of the unlawful behaviour.

c.     Exemplary damages. The normal principle is that damages only compensate for loss. Exemplary damages are awarded over and above any loss where the wrongdoer aimed to make a profit or where the state has acted oppressively, as LBS did here.

d.    Special damages, including for a huge quantity of material that had been saved on the hard drives of two of his computers and on many disks and memory sticks representing thousands of hours of work and a significant record of his personal and public life.

e.    Reinstatement. After all this time, it is highly unlikely AA could be reinstated. LBS could and should have addressed this in time.

The Agenda Report

Arrears

27.       The Report for the Sub-Committee from the Strategic Director presented on 25 November 2014 was deliberately misleading from the start. Paragraph 1 claimed that AA had large rent arrears, thereby kicking off with the implication that he deserved to be evicted and LBS’s officers were right to seek his eviction. This is both wrong and misleading:-

a.    A letter dated 19^th February 2007 from Jobcentre Plus, on LBS’s housing file, showed that a weekly deduction from AA’s benefits, of varying amounts between £11.20 and £11.50 per week, had been made to LBS between 2002 and 2005 for a total sum of £1,343.90. However, none of these payments are recorded on the section of LBS’s rent payment database relating to AA’s rental payments as having been received by LBS and there is no evidence that LBS chased up these payments or, if it received them, credited them to AA’s account. Had this information been available to the court at the hearing two weeks earlier, it seems unlikely that it would have done other than set aside the possession order subject to a condition that the small outstanding sum of about £218 was first paid off.

b.    The same thing happened in later years and the judge noted that, had the database recorded AA’s Jobseeker’s Allowance payments that had apparently been paid to LBS on his behalf, there would have been no arrears on 10^th May 2010 and the suspended order for possession would presumably have been discharged.

c.     LBS then did nothing for two years while AA’s arrears went up. Contrary to their own procedures, they made no enquiries as to why and no attempt to contact AA to discuss what was happening.

d.    Ms Okwara arranged a meeting with AA on 9^th November 2012 and he attended. She told him of the arrears and said it was unacceptable. AA showed her a letter indicating he was eligible for £9,500 funding from Student Finance England which would take 6 weeks to 2 months to arrange, from which he would pay off his arrears. In the event, he did not get this funding because LBS, amongst his other documents, destroyed the documents which would have allowed him to prove his entitlement.

e.    Further, in May 2013, the month after his eviction, Mr Akinsola told AA that if he was able to raise enough money to discharge his arrears and then paid it to LBS for that purpose, he would stand a good chance of getting his tenancy back. AA did obtain a sufficient sum from Sudan. If LBS had properly notified him of his pending eviction, rather than deliberately waiting 6 weeks to tell him, he would have had time to get the funds and pay off the arrears before eviction. Instead, Mr Akinsola wrongly told him his claims of unlawful eviction were being investigated by a senior officer and LBS would get back to him.

28.       The judge commented:-

AA’s consistent failure to address the payment of the shortfall in rental payments was inexcusable. But as the record of suspended orders shows, this non-payment was never of a kind or extent that would be likely to persuade the court to permit AA to be evicted from his secure tenancy and to terminate his 22 years as a LBS tenant, particularly as he had some excuse for the recent non-payments and LBS had apparently acquiesced in his non-payment for about two years. There was therefore a significant chance that the court would permit  AA at least one further chance to pay of all his arrears and to start paying shortfall payments promptly and regularly before allowing LBS finally to dispossess him of his tenancy.

29.       Therefore, it was LBS’s own actions which both inflated the arrears and prevented AA from paying them off and, even without this, if the court had been given the true picture, it is unlikely AA would have been evicted.

30.       It is also worth noting that LBS has and has had a large number of tenants with arrears around or in excess of the amount claimed against AA but LBS do not seek their eviction, subjecting them instead to suspended possession orders. There is nothing inevitable about the eviction of a tenant with arrears of this size.

Issues at Trial

31.       Paragraphs 2 and 12-13 of the Report asserted that AA’s claim was only about the destruction of his belongings. It was LBS themselves who brought an application to strike out those parts of AA’s claim which did not refer to the destruction of his belongings, thereby accepting that his claim did cover other matters. Then, when that application was adjourned at one of the interim hearings, LBS did not mention it again, let alone pursue it, thereby accepting that the other matters were still in issue. The full extent of AA’s claims is set out in the judgment and summarised above.

Internal Investigation

32.       Paragraphs 3 and 4 of the Report implied that AA’s claim was put to an internal investigation. However, Mr Matthews was only ever asked to look at the destruction of AA’s belongings. While his report did much to reveal the rest of the wrongdoing by Mr Davis, Ms Okwara, Ms Ashley and Ms Yusuff, it was never directed at the unlawful eviction, the cover-up, the misconduct of the court proceedings or any other matter.

Disciplinary Sanctions

33.       Paragraphs 4 and 5 of the Report pointed out that sanctions have been issued to “all the staff involved.” It would appear that the only staff subjected to any disciplinary proceedings were Mr Davis, Ms Okwara, Ms Ashley and Ms Yusuff. They were certainly the principal culprits but they are not the only miscreants identified by either Mr Matthews or the judge.

34.       Further, the appropriate sanction for gross misconduct is termination of employment. This case was at the extreme end of “gross misconduct”. It is difficult to conceive of any circumstances which could constitute a more serious breach of the trust held by LBS’s officers than deliberately to break the law, flagrantly breach internal standing orders and then to lie to cover up what they had done (all of this even without any conspiracy). However, as far as anyone is aware, no-one has been fired, demoted or otherwise moved from post.

Payment

35.       Paragraph 14 of the Report claimed that LBS contributed £5,000 for AA to obtain independent legal advice. It is possible that this was the justification used in internal discussions but the fact is that on 14^th March 2014 the court ordered LBS to make an interim payment of £5,000, the only time such a sum of money was mentioned. The court would have no power to order LBS to pay for legal advice. The payment was a credit against the amount LBS would have to pay in damages. Further, it was ordered 4 months after the trial had finished, making it rather late for any legal advice.

LBS’s position

36.       Paragraph 15 of the Report pointed out that LBS maintained throughout that the eviction was lawful. That is true but should be a matter of deep shame and motivation for some serious correctional action. It is not necessary to accept that there was any conspiracy to see that AA’s eviction was unlawful in that it was founded on many abuses of the court procedure (not limited to obtaining a warrant without court permission but extending to the numerous breaches of the duty of candour and co-operation with the court) and numerous failures to comply with internal policies and procedures.

37.       It is a serious concern that LBS, at all levels, does not understand the role of the law or the courts. They are not unnecessary obstructions to officer discretion but the framework within which LBS must and ought to work. Court judgments are not occasions for defensive obfuscation so that maximum officer discretion can be retained but instead useful guidance as to how to conduct LBS’s work to the mutual benefit of all in future. Failure to apply that guidance only allows for history to repeat itself.

38.       Further, it is an even more serious concern that, even now, LBS does not understand who the victim here was. If LBS is not here to protect and provide services for the likes of AA, then what is it for?

Unfair Trial

39.       The Report claims that LBS acted with fairness throughout all the litigation (paragraph 13) and that the trial was unfair, not to AA but to LBS (paragraphs 16 and 18). These are risible and contemptible claims for many reasons, including the following:-

a.    As referred to above, in AA’s attempts to be reinstated and retrieve his belongings in the immediate aftermath of his eviction, LBS misled the court and failed to provide the details they were obliged to, thus obliterating any chance AA had of rescuing either his tenancy or his belongings.

b.    LBS had a full legal team headed by a QC who specialises in housing and local government law. AA represented himself.

c.     The QC was assisted by the most senior officers in both the legal and housing departments. AA had no assistance.

d.    LBS had five witnesses giving oral evidence at the trial. AA had only himself.

e.    LBS deliberately withheld documents they were legally and ethically obliged to disclose (see further below on disclosure).

f.      LBS relied on documents of dubious authenticity (see further below).

g.     LBS chose not to call any of the officers directly involved in the unlawful action against AA, thereby deliberately denying the judge or AA any opportunity to cross-examine them and obtain further details. The only reason for doing so was the risk that those details would have been embarrassing to LBS and/or the officers would have perjured themselves – it could not have been that LBS were protecting the officers from further sanction because their disciplinary proceedings had already been completed.

h.    LBS knowingly and deliberately used every procedural tactic possible to limit AA’s claim to a mere assessment of the monetary value of his belongings which they had unlawfully destroyed and exclude all his other allegations:

(i)   “LBS did not … pursue its threatened application to strike out the conspiracy claims as disclosing no cause of action and as being abusive and it only sought to confine the trial to the narrow assessment of damages that it contended was the only claim remaining for determination in order to prevent AA and the court from considering and giving appropriate effect to the matters disclosed in the Matthews report”.

(ii) Such abuse of process as occurred was occasioned by LBS’s conduct of its defence throughout the seven applications that occurred in this litigation by LBS having failed to provide the court of much essential detail at each of these hearings and the court thus being unaware at each hearing of the details of LBS’s unlawful conduct and its pursuit of its possession claim and its consequences for ulterior motives and in abuse of process.

Disclosure

40.       It is a centuries-old, fundamental rule of English civil procedure that each party to a court case must disclose to the other party any relevant documents, including any which support the other party’s case. This is currently expressed in Part 31 of the Civil Procedure Rules which govern court procedure:-

31.6  Standard disclosure requires a party to disclose only–

(a)  the documents on which he relies; and

(b)  the documents which –

(i)   adversely affect his own case;

(ii) adversely affect another party’s case; or

(iii)                 support another party’s case; and

(c)   the documents which he is required to disclose by a relevant practice direction.

41.       The report by Mr Matthews clearly came within the disclosure obligations. LBS had even said in their Defence (the formal document which sets out their case) that they would provide the details of their internal investigation. The judge stated,

14.       When Mr Matthews’ Report (“the Matthews report”) was published to senior management on 22^nd August 2013, it would or should have been obvious to LBS’s legal team that its contents and conclusions were highly material to AA’s claims since he was alleging that his eviction and loss of possessions had resulted from a conspiracy by the LBS officers that had been investigated to harm him. Moreover, LBS had pleaded in its defence that AA’s conspiracy allegations were strenuously denied, that there was no evidence of any malevolent intention on LBS’s behalf, that the allegations were absurd and without factual foundation, that they failed to disclose any reasonable cause of action and that they should be struck out pursuant to CPR 3.4(2).

15.       It follows that the entire report should therefore have been disclosed to AA once it came into LBS’s possession since the defence had asserted that full details of the report would be given in evidence once they had been published and its contents were highly material to support AA’s case as well as his refutation of LBS’s case. However, LBS failed to disclose the report until ordered to on the second day of the trial even though it had received it some four months prior to the trial.

42.       The judge stated that neither of LBS’s justifications for withholding the Matthews report stood scrutiny “and, indeed, I am driven to the conclusion that the report was withheld because its contents were so damning of and detrimental to LBS’s defences”.

43.       LBS also should have but did not disclose:-

a.    Any entries on EDMS, the computer information system on which the Residential Team stored any information about AA’s tenancy, meaning that anything not duplicated on iWorld, the system used by the Debt Management Team, was not in evidence.

b.    Anything at all on the housing file until ordered on second day of trial.

c.     Even when disclosed, the file contained nothing after 5^th November 2010, despite the fact that iWorld entries demonstrated that there should have been. The judge concluded on all the evidence that all documents after November 2010 had been deliberately removed from the housing file.

d.    Four letters supposedly from Ms Okwara to AA, until the first day of trial, without any explanation of where they had come from or when they had been created originally. Three of them were not even mentioned on iWorld, the system on which all such correspondence is supposed to be recorded, and the judge doubted they were authentic.

e.    Anything relating to the strike-out of a warrant on 12^th September 2007.

44.       The fact is that the universal reaction of lawyers specialising in this field is astonishment that an unrepresented litigant managed to overcome such a massive imbalance of power to succeed. The problem for LBS was that, unlike any of their officers, the judge was scrupulously fair.

Appeal

45.       Paragraphs 17-19 of the Report suggested that an appeal could be won but would not be financially prudent. This is equally risible. An appeal could only be on a point of law but there isn’t really any dispute on the law. LBS did argue a couple of points of law but they were not strong. The main dispute was one of fact. Even there, the judge had more than enough material to find against LBS. It is virtually inconceivable that the judgment would be overturned.

Review, process and procedure

46.       The last few paragraphs of the Report purported to address the review of LBS process and procedure. The entire Report is a negation of the possibility that such review could ever be successful since it does not accept the judgment of the High Court of England and Wales. Apparently, Mr Matthews’s conclusion that his fellow officers were merely incompetent rather than part of a conspiracy is regarded as more reliable, despite the fact that he is not a judge and, unlike the judge, is neither objective nor impartial.

47.       Further and importantly, as referred to above, there is no acknowledgment of the culture which allowed these things to happen. Again, it is not necessary to accept that there was a conspiracy to see that there was a culture in which officers were able to assume that their fellow officers would accept the various breaches of procedure and that any disciplinary sanction would be insufficient to stop them. The Report is clearly part of that culture. The Strategic Director is part of the problem.