Alex Schymyck of Garden Court Chambers acted for the family, instructed by Rachel Stower and Victor Buehring of Luton Law Centre.
The High Court has stepped in to order the Secretary of State for the Home Department to accommodate a family who has lived in the UK for over 20 years and was facing homelessness after being evicted from their previous accommodation. In R (Ganpot) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] EWHC 197 (Admin), Clive Sheldon KC made a mandatory order requiring the Home Office to provide accommodation on the same day to ensure that the family did not become homeless in the middle of winter.
The Home Office had refused to provide accommodation because they had not imposed immigration bail conditions on the family and therefore argued before the Court that the family were not entitled to Schedule 10 accommodation. The family argued that this was a technicality and that the Home Office was obliged by Section 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998 to impose immigration bail conditions in order to ensure that the family were entitled to Schedule 10 accommodation to avoid a breach of Article 3 ECHR.
The judge made the mandatory order asked for the family, concluding:
"In my judgment, therefore, it is strongly arguable that the Defendant has acted unlawfully by exercising her Schedule 10 powers in a way which puts the Claimants to this choice: either choice involves a real risk of contravening the Claimant's Convention rights: article 3, if they stay in the United Kingdom and become "street homeless"; or article 8, if they have to return to Grenada."
The case has been reported in the Independent and the Evening Standard.
