Church and State blog: Declan's year in, year out battle with the Mayor of London-commissioned St Mungo's over case notes shows no signs of abating (WITH UPDATE 26/4/2019)

Thursday, April 25, 2019

Declan's year in, year out battle with the Mayor of London-commissioned St Mungo's over case notes shows no signs of abating (WITH UPDATE 26/4/2019)

Our Church and State website has no less than 57 Nobel Laureates on it; for details, see this blog's sidebar under "Church and State" (updated today).

County Court at Central London, Royal Courts of Justice

Heavey v St Mungo's (2016)

Trial held in the Central London County Court, Royal Courts of Justice on 20 February 2017.

On 23 August 2018, Declan complained to the Information Commissioner's Office about case notes St Mungo's Executive Director Dominic Williamson assured the Court at trial in February 2017 had been rectified by him but were in fact being held under my name. It took the scheduling of a preliminary hearing in October 2016 to have case notes from two meetings so-called rectified by Williamson as Declan had requested all along; and that rectification only took place after a failed attempt by an international firm of solicitors, Osborne Clarke, to have Declan's claim struck out on the papers. The judge at the preliminary hearing dismissed St Mungo's application to strike out Declan's claim for compensation. DJ Avent's order dated 11 March 2017 does not state why he dismissed the claim at trial. Williamson: "The court case concerned your complaint about the notes on your record. My understanding is that following the court case it became apparent that the note in contention was mirrored on your wife's record - which I don't recall being aware of at the time - and this was subsequently amended to reflect the change we had made to yours. The court was therefore not misled." We do not accept that the court was not misled.

4 January: Information Commissioner: Declan battles the Commissioner's Lead Case Officer over the nature of his data complaint against the Mayor of London-commissioned St Mungo's (WITH UPDATE 31/1/2019) What an experience!

Declan and I are housed in a flat that is part of the Mayor of London's Rough Sleepers Initiative. Alongside our tenancy is access to the Mayor's Tenancy Sustainment Team (TST) at St Mungo's. It has been acknowledged by the Greater London Authority in court papers that both Declan and I can live independently – we do not have addictions or mental illness or behavioural issues. Our needs are solely related to the harassment, discrimination and intimidation we routinely face. Earlier this month Declan wrote to Mayor of London Sadiq Khan about the blockade across London on his volunteer applications notwithstanding this support from St Mungo's (Local Government Ombudsman Case ID: 18011204). This morning he has written to St Mungo's CEO Howard Sinclair about his year in, year out battle with this charity over case notes that shows no signs of abating.

Howard Sinclair
CEO
St Mungo's

Address removed for email

25 April 2019

Dear Mr Sinclair,

Yesterday evening I received a telephone call from St Mungo's Tenancy Sustainment Team (TST).

I am concerned that I could not be provided with any assurance whatsoever that agreed-upon notes dating back to 18 February will be inputted into your Opal system in a manner that I had thought had been established before I received this phone call.

Last January, after a protracted legal battle and with court proceedings appearing imminent, I received the email below from St Mungo's TST Service Manager Robert Buck. It states: "Moving forward all and any notes will be agreed upon by you and TST before inputting into our Opal system." Please note that neither my wife nor I agree to emails (and/or their attachments) from any party being used as notes under any circumstances.

I have seen and fought the awful results of email and other forms of communication (such as my calls in to the TST duty line) being turned into notes without my knowledge or consent. I therefore await to hear back from St Mungo's TST on the question of the manner by which agreed-upon notes will be inputted into your Opal system, if different from the format presented in Mr Buck's email below.

Yours sincerely,

Declan Heavey
Managing Director
Network for Church Monitoring

18 February 2019[1]
Met with Declan at his home today at 3pm on 18 February. On 1 February Declan and TST North came to an agreement regarding support going forward. Marc: Send supporting email to Sense.

6 March 2019[2]
Marc: Supporting email sent to Sense.

15 March 2019[3]
Met with Declan at his home today at 3.30pm on 15 March. Meeting following Declan's interview with Sense on 7 March. Marc: Enhanced supporting email sent to KEEN London containing up-front reference to Declan's former homelessness.

22 March 2019[4]
Marc: Contacted KEEN London. Volunteer coordinator is due to return next week and shall contact regarding supporting email.

2 April 2019[5]
Marc: Contacted KEEN London. Spoke with volunteer coordinator and waiting for application to be forwarded.

____________________________
1-3 These three notes were agreed upon during said meeting of 15 March 2019.
4-5 The wording of these latter two action notes was agreed upon by email on 17 April 2019.

Last May St Mungo's made the international press for all the wrong reasons. They are accused of helping to get rough sleepers arrested and deported. When the story came through my Russia Today (RT) news feed, it left Declan gob smacked. He subsequently spoke with Diane Taylor, the journalist covering the story for the Guardian.

EU freedom for rough sleepers infringed - shock horror. https://t.co/RuJKrSEiTm
— Andrew Martin (@devonprof) May 14, 2018

UPDATE 26 April (1.02pm): Not an iota! Yesterday Declan received a response from St Mungo's to the above. A St Mungo's TST line manager wants to meet him! Declan responded that it is unfair and unreasonable for this line manager to expect him to meet her when she will not explain what is preventing her from inputting into their Opal system agreed-upon notes since 18 February, including those from two meetings that have already taken place. Today we're dealing with absolute silence, which is ominous, and swiftly heading for a pre-action letter under the Human Rights Act Articles 8 (protection of family life and home) and 14 (prohibition of discrimination). This is a case Declan never declared closed last January; see my post of 27 January, Particulars of Claim: Declan is forced to issue court proceedings against the Mayor of London-commissioned St Mungo's without further notice (WITH UPDATE 31/1/2019). He will probably issue that pre-action letter this evening, given the destabilisation of our tenancy that has occurred and continues. Declan has been fighting for over two months for the first of two unrecorded meetings, held on 18 February, to be recorded as agreed with St Mungo's TST during the second unrecorded meeting over a month ago. You could't make it up!

From My Picks:

8 April: Threat to Life: Declan writes to Mayor of London Sadiq Khan about the blockade across London on his volunteer applications notwithstanding his support from the Mayor-commissioned St Mungo's (Local Government Ombudsman Case ID: 18011204)

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan

'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

http://churchandstate.org.uk/about/

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

Thursday, April 25, 2019

Declan's year in, year out battle with the Mayor of London-commissioned St Mungo's over case notes shows no signs of abating (WITH UPDATE 26/4/2019)

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