Housing Law is the law relating to the security and condition of your home. It includes landlord and tenant law, mortgages, the law relating to homeless people, housing allocation and local authority powers to regulate and improve housing conditions. These days it is also one of the Government's main tools in tackling anti-social behaviour (see the Housing Links opposite).

NACAB's Adviceguide gives a good description of the rights of tenants - go to their website,  click on "Housing". For the rights of homeless persons, click on "Housing", then "Finding Accommodation" and then on "Help for homeless people".

If you are a solicitor or advice agency with a contract with the Legal Services Commission, then you used to be able to phone 1 Pump Court’s Housing Helpline but funding has been terminated. Shelter still run a helpline so you can try them instead

Housing and Human Rights

The UK has incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights ("ECHR") through the Human Rights Act 1998 ("HRA"). However, the ECHR mostly deals with civil and political rights rather than economic, social and cultural rights, such as the right to housing. Although the Court of Appeal has held that shelter is a basic human right (Secretary of State for Home Dept -v- Limbuela [2004] EWCA Civ 540), the European Court of Human Rights has decided that there is no right to housing in the ECHR (Burton -v- UK (1996) 22 EHRR CD 135). However, there is such a right in a number of other human rights instruments (see Applying the Right to Housing [2002] JHL 11 as to how the right to housing could be used in English courts):-

• Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Art.25
• International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Art.11(1)
• Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, Art.5(e)(iii)
• Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, Art.14(2)
• Convention on the Rights of the Child, Art.27
• Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, Art.21
• Convention on the Rights of Migrant Workers, Art.43(1) (treaty not ratified by UK)
• European Social Charter (revised), Art.31 (revision not yet ratified)

HLPA TALK

On 16th July 2008 I gave a talk to the Housing Law Practitioners Association on the latest developments in the law on possession proceedings. You can download my handout here, in Word or RTF format.

SPECIALIST SUPPORT TERMINATED

The Legal Services Commission decided not to grant 1 Pump Court a further Specialist Support Contract. This means that our Helpline terminated at the end of March 2008. Shelter was the only organisation whose contract was renewed.