Church and State blog: Heavey v Single Homeless Project: Will the Central London County Court rule we consented to declarations for online referral that we are paying our own salaries and that we are both mentally ill, and despite our photographic evidence to the contrary?

Sunday, December 28, 2014

Heavey v Single Homeless Project: Will the Central London County Court rule we consented to declarations for online referral that we are paying our own salaries and that we are both mentally ill, and despite our photographic evidence to the contrary?

Declan and I are clients of the Mayor of London's Greater London Authority Housing First programme. Last May we were housed by the Single Homeless Project (SHP), one of three charitable organisations that operate the Housing First service. At the time we wondered why we were put in an accommodation under the tutelage of the Mayor of London when we had been evicted from our previous flat and forced to sleep on the streets of London for over a year, where we were harassed and threatened by the police (see blog of 2 October, "City of London Police: If you want to challenge our word against yours again, you need to make an application to the High Court for permission to apply for judicial review").

It has transpired that SHP Housing First has circulated among any number of agencies via online referral that we are paying our own salaries as employees of Network for Church Monitoring (N4CM) and that we are both mentally ill. We are currently waiting for a ruling from the Central London County Court on this matter (see blog of 22 November, "Declan's response to the Single Homeless Project CEO's submission to the Central London County Court [DATA PROTECTION]"), the High Court having already ruled that the Mayor of London bears no responsibility for the Housing First programme he funds (see blog of 5 November, "High Court rules that the Mayor of London bears no responsibility for his Greater London Authority (GLA) Housing First Programme").

In the UK, data-protection law is often cited in the media as a powerful piece of legislation and organisations can't just write whatever they want:

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Nonetheless, all the Information Commissioner could do for us was instruct SHP to disclose the information they hold about us on their computerised database. This is a screenshot of section 4 of the paper version of a referral form we completed with a SHP Housing First worker last March, co-signed by the worker himself:

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It is quite clear from the above that we have incurred a personal debt of £6,000, but not according to SHP. They split the paper version of the form into two online forms, one for Declan and one for myself, and make out in both forms that we are paying our own salaries; they even made up their own scam to deliver this make-believe story, but more about that in the next paragraph. Under "Rent Arrears and Debt" that is in a different format than specified by the paper version of the form, not only do they not register a personal debt for either of us (£0.00), but on Declan's online form they add: "Mr Heavey has an American benefactor who has financed his website in a salaried manner. This totals £6000." On my online form, it reads: "Mrs Heavey and her partner have a debt of £6000 to an American benefactor who is paying them a salary over the course of this year. They wish to return this money." This is our photographic evidence:

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As if this was not sufficient, they then made up the scam that our salaries are to facilitate our application for accommodation and that we could still qualify for benefits from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). If we were not paying our own salaries as part of this scam, we could not possibly qualify for benefits from the DWP because our salaries exceed the amount permitted for either of us to claim Jobseeker's Allowance. Contrary to SHP's made-believe story below, we are not claiming benefits from the DWP because we are not paying our own salaries and are therefore not entitled to claim any benefits from the DWP. Our Housing Benefit claim is paid by Newham Council, not DWP. This is our photographic evidence of a scam made up by SHP but never perpetrated by us:

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And here's more made-up information that could only apply if I was paying my own salary:

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Not only do we both have jobs but Declan has tried every possible means to communicate to SHP that we are not paying our own salaries. Our debt of £6,000 comes from a loan of £3,028.14 that was wired to us from America in October 2012 and a second loan of £3,140.15 that was wired to us in August 2013 (both loans are verifiable by bank statements, tax declarations and emails), and neither loan has anything to do with the £5,935.68 that was lodged to an account for N4CM in February 2014 in order to support our salaries for one year. Even this email from N4CM Chairman Dr Stephen Mumford to SHP splitting the two sums of money - £6,000 and £5,935.68 - has fallen on deaf ears:

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Perhaps the ulterior motive for these breaches of the Data Protection Act lies in Dr Mumford's strong rebuttal of the personal opinion of a SHP Housing First manager who had not even met us when she declared that we are both mentally ill, an unqualified and biased opinion they also steadfastly refuse to remove from our personal data on their computerised database:

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We claim that of the eight principles of good information handling cited in the Data Protection exhibit above, SHP have broken no less than five principles. Our data was not (1) fairly and lawfully processed; (2) processed for limited purposes; (3) adequate, relevant and not excessive; (4) accurate; and (5) processed in line with data subject's rights. Will the Central London County Court rule we consented to declarations for online referral that we are paying our own salaries and that we are both mentally ill, when we most certainly did neither? And why would SHP put us through the courts after over a year of street homelessness when they could rectify all this data in a matter of minutes?

Heavey v Single Homeless Project

Brief details of claim

On 19 March 2014, the Claimant made a formal Subject Access Request under the Data Protection Act 1998 for any information held about him on the Defendant’s computerised database. This information was only submitted by the Defendant to the Claimant on 5 August 2014, following instruction from the Information Commissioner's Office. The Claimant then discovered that personal data contained in a printed referral form dated 17 March 2014 had been inaccurately entered online by the Defendant and submitted to the Clearing House for accommodation purposes. On 15 August 2014, the Claimant and his employer both wrote to the Defendant about inaccurate financial data that leaves the Claimant open to accusations of deception and fraud, but neither has been able to elicit a response from the Defendant on the matter. The Claimant is therefore making an application to the Court for a declaration that the Defendant has acted unlawfully and an order that the data controller rectify those financial data and any other personal data in respect of which he is the data controller and which contain an expression of opinion which appears to the Court to be based on the inaccurate financial data. He also seeks an award of damages and punitive damages for breach of data protection obligations.

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Let me recommend an important web site churchandstate.org.uk. Operating out of London this well-designed and exciting web site covers church-state, population, climate change and other issues. Check it out -- Edd Doerr, President, Americans for Religious Liberty

If you would like to help us personally, please feel free to pick up one of our books (shameless plug, I know, but every sale helps us to work our way out of our precarious situation). There is currently five books available in Church and State Press here, and all proceeds from the first four of these books go to us with the authors' permission. Thank you all for all the support you have given us, and I hope we can keep our Church and State website going despite the constant threats.

Update (8 May 2015): Declan is vindicated in court and wins £750 in damages from the Single Homeless Project

Church and State

MAYOR OF LONDON RSI PROPERTY
DAY 406 IN A WEEKLY PERIODIC TENANCY
SUBJECT TO A SECTION 21 NOTICE

(SEE PARA. 3 BELOW)

1. Our 308 Honorary Associates include 20 Nobel Prize laureates. Declan and I are engaged in a project that deals with the publication of issues significant to social policy in a number of key areas, e.g., climate change, population, futurism, atheism, and free speech. Established as Network for Church Monitoring, a non-profit company limited by guarantee, our main publication, found at the website, Church and State, calls attention to subjects, not the least which have been critical of the interaction between religious and secular institutions. We have been the target of numerous threats and actions, e.g., the former resulting in threats to Declan's life, and the latter, which have led to vandalism. The various incidents are on record with the police and other official agencies.

2. There are no less than 63 Nobel Prize laureates on the Church and State website from 20 Honorary Associates, eight articles, nine book excerpts and 33 petition signatories. (For example, one Nobel laureate signed our Nobel petition in support of human embryonic stem cell research and gave us permission to excerpt from one of his books.) Our list of associates also includes 18 US National Medal laureates, and six Turing Award laureates (the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in computer science). We have published one article and excerpted from the books of seven members of the British House of Lords. And there are 31 knighted professors on the site from 13 Honorary Associates, one book excerpt and 21 petition signatories. These figures are despite the never-ending assault on our email (this link reveals the targeting of our emails to, among others, a close colleague in Washington, DC as well as space advocates and Nobel laureates).

3. This is Day 406 for us living under the threat to life of a 'no fault' eviction by Peabody Trust.[1] We live in a Mayor of London's Rough Sleepers Initiative (RSI) property. Peabody's appalling new terms of tenancy have forced us into an unstable weekly periodic tenancy that poses a threat to Declan's life and inhibits our ability to exercise our rights. Declan accumulated quite a history with the Housing Ombudsman Service before he received the Ombudsman's decision not to investigate a referral from Lyn Brown MP on jurisdictional grounds. The Ombudsman was asked to consider whether or not our tenancy has been renewed like for like; and whether, if not, it should be in light of the landlord having accused us of not signing a like-for-like agreement. The Equality and Human Rights Commission will not accept a referral of discrimination from Ms Brown, the Commission's helpline (EASS) having grossly distorted the complaint against Peabody. We no longer have pro se access to the courts (see next paragraph).

4. This eviction matter came before District Judge Ruth Fine at the Central London County Court on 30 June 2020, when both counsel for St Mungo's (the charity in effective control of our tenancy) and Declan presented their positions. Declan lost the case and was ordered to pay £1,850 in costs. A publishing colleague in America cleared these costs within 24 hours of my blog post about this hearing for strike out on a related issue that was the essence of the claim, i.e., that St Mungo's would take a phone call to confirm that we are clients of the Mayor of London's RSI programme. Within a week of the hearing, St Mungo's had agreed to take this phone call for us both, the Court having ruled that they were not obliged to do so despite our circumstances. This time we escaped bankruptcy (counsel for St Mungo's asked for £3,407.50 in costs), but consider that to seek pro se access to justice in the courts has become far too dangerous for us. Declan currently has before the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman the decision of the Information Commissioner that allows St Mungo's to continue processing coercive support plans without our knowledge or consent and that also poses a threat to his life.

5. When it comes to traffic, we have had 10.7 million hits in the past three years on Facebook; however, I left the platform on 13 March 2021 for one year rather than risk being banned for life. It is indisputable that with any sort of level playing field Church and State would have far exceeded 2.5 million hits last year. In addition to a large variety of blocks without explanation, Facebook had so severely restricted our Page's distribution by October 2020 that it was almost as good as an unpublished page.[2] Currently, we are up to their 85th block since 1 December 2015, and as usual without an explanation. This block records as one half of their 3rd double block in the first five weeks of this year that lasted 60 days. Our traffic has also been curtailed by over 2.5K blocks on access to Church and State since 26 July 2016, including 29 full distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks since 17 May 2019 that have lasted for as long as 54 hours at a time.[3] About 70% of our hits are from Americans.

"This is precisely the hard hitting kind of response needed to clarify the unfair way Facebook is treating your highly reputable site." Don Collins, Founder, International Services Assistance Fund, Washington DC

Last updated: 26/06/21

_________________________

[1] Once a fixed term has elapsed, the landlord has the option to seek eviction even if the tenant has upheld their obligations in full (though of course the landlord must still apply for and obtain a county court order).

[2] 17/10/20: We have permission to publish this ISAF letter of 30 September to Facebook COO Sheryl Samberg. Facebook has so severely restricted our Page's distribution since 4 September that it's almost as good as an unpublished page

[3] Since October 2019, we have been defining a full DDoS attack as having such a high volume of up to 4-minute blocks on access to Church and State that we don't bother recording them all.

Church and State blog

Sunday, December 28, 2014

Heavey v Single Homeless Project: Will the Central London County Court rule we consented to declarations for online referral that we are paying our own salaries and that we are both mentally ill, and despite our photographic evidence to the contrary?

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