Decluttering P’s home: Who represents P?

By Celia Kitzinger, 17 June 2024

This was a 20-minute hearing (case number COP 14104740) before DJ Deborah Campbell, sitting in Bristol on 20th May 2024. It appeared in the Courtel/CourtServe listings as “Public with reporting restrictions, via Teams” concerning “(a) If RP has capacity to decide whether his home should be decluttered (b) Whether it is in RP’s best interests that his home should be decluttered“.

Open justice ran smoothly for this case. The listing was accurate and helpful. I received the link in a timely fashion. The Transparency Order (made by HHJ Cope on 22nd September 2023) was in the standard form and doesn’t prohibit identifying any public bodies. The judge welcomed observers and gave us a summary of the case. Oh, if only all hearings were like this!

In June 2023 (so nearly a year ago), the local authority (North Somerset Council, represented by in-house solicitor Will Cottrell) had applied to the court for permission to enter and declutter RP’s home. There was a risk that the Housing Association was going to evict him due to the state of the property – despite attempts made by the social worker to assist him with decluttering, attempts which had not, apparently led to much progress. Since then a specialist decluttering organisation had been appointed to work with RP and that had been much more successful. “His response has been very positive and – to the social worker’s surprise – he’s engaging with them“. Progress is said to be “slow but steady“.

The problem, said Will Cottrell (for the local authority) is that he’d expected to have a pre-hearing meeting with the housing association to hear from them whether RP’s decluttering progress has been sufficient – or at least in the right direction – to the extent that they would no longer wish to evict him. But no representative from the housing association had come to the pre-hearing meeting.

According to the local authority: “There appear to be two options. The most extreme is to do nothing, if that’s what RP wishes, and simply to respect his wishes which may commit him to eviction from the housing association. Or the other extreme would be to remove him from his house to a placement and conduct a complete clearance of the property. Neither option is attractive, and the social worker is steadfastly against the latter. You have already approved an 8-week course of 1-2 hour visits and we have made an application for that to become a permanent support provided to RP.”

There was some discussion about the funding stream. I gathered that a one-off request can be made for someone like RP who doesn’t receive any other services under the Care Act which has the objective of maintaining a habitable home environment.

The Official Solicitor has declined to support RP in the role of litigation friend on the basis of finances: “he’s not eligible for full legal aid but equally doesn’t have enough money to pay privately either“. The local authority has “put out feelers for Accredited Legal Representatives and they said if the Official Solicitor has declined to accept the invitation to act on the basis of financial aspects of the case, then it was highly unlikely that they’d accept it either, for the same reasons“.

The judge was quite concerned about this. She said: “[RP] is aware these proceedings are ongoing and he’s aware of the eviction risk – though his understanding of the eviction risk is- He doesn’t have capacity for that, because he says he’s just going to move to Greece. Are there any other options for ensuring that [RP] can take part in these proceedings?“

The local authority raised the possibility of whether the Council would be able to fund RP’s former advocate to represent RP in these proceedings – adding, “I don’t know if he’d then want a solicitor, leading to the same situation“.

“I think we have to try”, said the judge. “If there’s no joy on that basis, come back to me and we’ll have to think of something else. Can you update the draft Order to reflect that. Apart from that, I’m happy with what’s proposed“.

The next hearing was agreed for 3pm on 26th June 2024.

Celia Kitzinger is co-director of the Open Justice Court of Protection Project. She has observed more than 550 hearings since May 2020 and written more than 100 blog posts. She is on LinkedIn (here), and tweets @KitzingerCelia