LATEST NEWS

Many frail and vulnerable people have an antipathy to institutional care and wish for nothing more than to stay in their own homes. That may not always be feasible but, as a Court of Protection ruling showed, judges pay the greatest respect to their freedom of choice.   The case concerned a 92-year-old woman suffering from Alzheimer's disease. After her husband's death, she continued to inhabit the family home where she had lived for 40 years. Her son, who had Asperger's syndrome and had been diagnosed with a hoarding disorder, gave...

A Woman battling cancer has revealed she only has months to move out of her home - with nowhere else to go, as Ealing Council refuses to help. Erzsebet Kovacs was diagnosed with Stage 4 Breast Cancer in 2021. There were delays in getting treatment due to COVID backlogs which lead to her breast cancer metastasising to multiple sites, and the cancer in her spine caused fractures in her vertebrae, making movement excruciatingly painful. Erzsebet lives in Jerome Towers on the 12th floor. Erzsebet’s flat is home to infestation of mice,...

If noise arising from major infrastructure projects disturbs your peace and diminishes the value of your home, you have a legal right to fair compensation. In a case on point, a householder living a mile away from an extended airport runway was awarded £75,000 by the Upper Tribunal (UT). The householder asserted that, since the extension came into use, jets overflying his home had become lower, closer and noisier. His sleep was disturbed and noise had become an abiding feature of his and his family's lives. Normal conversation in the...

‘Daddy touched me’: The Family Court’s Approach to Child Sexual Abuse Allegations in Re C EWFC 138   A recent judgment from HHJ Clive Baker outlined how parents and professionals should respond when a child makes an allegation of sexual abuse against a parent. This case was about a 4-year-old girl who told her mother that her father had touched her inappropriately whilst she was being looked after by him after school one day. The mother told the police who came to ask the child questions about the inappropriate touching the...