News Law European court of human rights Strasbourg court orders payout to woman evicted from Welsh caravan site

From the Guardian

The European court of human rights has ordered the government to pay £6,500 in compensation to a mother who was forced to leave a council's Gypsy site in Wales.

Maria Buckland, 53, was denied the opportunity to challenge her eviction through the British courts after the House of Lords denied her permission to appeal, the ECHR judgment said.

The decision was one of two released on Tuesday in which the Strasbourg court found against the UK. The case revolved around Buckland's rights to respect for private and family life and home as guaranteed by article 8 of the European convention on human rights.

Buckland, a mother of two, moved on to the Cae Garw caravan site near Port Talbot in 1999, and six years later was served with a possession order revoking her licence.

She alleged that she had not been given the chance to challenge the authorities' decision in the domestic proceedings on the grounds of her personal circumstances. She eventually left the caravan site in May 2008 after the House of Lords' refusal of her request for permission to appeal.

The Strasbourg court ordered that Britain should pay her €4,000 in damages and a further €4,000 in costs and expenses.

The judgment said she had never been given a full explanation of why she had been asked to leave the Traveller site. A British judge at a hearing in 2006 "was, however, satisfied that her son, who resided part of the time with her, had been involved in an incident on site in which he threatened someone with a gun, although it was not clear whether the gun had been real or merely an imitation; and had dumped garden refuse on the site", it said.

In relation to Buckland herself, it was only said that she had failed to pay arrears in her water charges. The ECHR said: "Although the court has found a procedural violation of article 8 of the convention, it … is not possible to speculate as to what would have been the outcome if the applicant had been able to contest the making of the possession order on the basis of her personal circumstances." Instead the courts had said her only possible legal options were a challenge to the law itself or a judicial review of the process.

However, it was satisfied that as a result of the making of a possession order that Buckland was unable to challenge, she had "suffered some feelings of frustration and injustice".

Buckland, the judgment said, was now living on land owned by her brother. "It has no planning permission for residential use and its occupants, which include the applicant's brother, his six children and the applicants' parents, share minimal facilities, namely one toilet and one sink with cold running water in a shed with no lighting."

see also: Wales Online - Euro judges order payout to evicted mum whose gun-toting son threatened residents