An injunction had been obtained against our client by his council landlord under Anti-social Behaviour, Crime & Policing Act 2014. This injunction was obtained after serious allegations of threats of violence towards a neighbour which resulted in him being separately charged with public order offences. After a couple of months our client was again accused of threatening behaviour to the neighbour and visitors, and the Council successfully applied to add an exclusion order to the injunction. The exclusion order prevented our client from living at his home . Committal proceedings were also started for these breaches.
We were instructed by our client at this stage and he had not been represented since the start of the injunction proceedings. Our client clearly suffered from mental health problems although he was not under the care of any mental team and had historically received little support. We applied to discharge/vary the injunction to allow him to return to his home on the basis that the Council had failed to comply with their own vulnerable tenant’s policy and they had breached the Public Sector Equality Duty. During proceedings our client also committed two breaches for which further committal proceedings were started; however these breaches only involved visiting his flat, once after a suspected burglary. During the injunction proceedings the Crown Prosecution Service dropped the criminal charges for the events that were the basis of the original injunction after assistance from our criminal team.
Our client was originally rough sleeping as a result of the extended injunction, and although we helped him to secure temporary accommodation, the stress he experienced contributed to a deterioration in mental health that resulted in the psychiatric expert concluding that our client had lost capacity to understand the injunction. The injunction was subsequently set aside following the judgement in Wookey v Wookey [1991] 3 WLR 135, and our client was no longer prevented from entering his home. The Council decided to not pursue the committal proceedings any further.
