I am appointed to represent a patient who was made subject to a year long injunction excluding him from his rented flat (before I became involved with the case). It has emerged that he had no legal advice and did not attend the legal proceedings ( he was detained at the time.) I assume that the court were not informed that he lacked capacity. As he does not have capacity to instruct I am unsure what, if anything, I can do about this. He does not have family so nobody who could act as litigation friend.
Any ideas?
Wow. That really is what a famous fictional detective would call a three pipe problem.
I will need some time to draw up a list of questions but the first one might be under what was the person detained - MHA, criminal, etc and does he have a social worker or related person involved as I assume he must and what outcome is being sought.
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He is detained under s3 and the ward/care co. have not been at all proactive in dealing with the proceedings as it is recorded in the progress notes that he said he did not want to attend the injunction proceedings or to be legally represented so it just went ahead in his absence. He wants to return to his flat -although the team are of the opinion that he needs supported accommodation.
Have you solved this three-pipe problem…?
Well- this was quite interesting.
We had lengthy tribunal proceedings and the plan was to discharge him to supported accommodation. As his housing benefit was still covering the flat and was needed to cover the supported accommodation I could not see how that would work until it became apparent that the Care Co. had obtained his signature to a document relinquishing the tenancy of his flat. I was absolutely furious as she had been present in tribunal proceedings when his wish to maintain tenancy on his flat was discussed. He said he didn’t know what he was signing. I wrote many emails to the council saying he lacked capacity/ was illiterate. The CRC said he did have capacity and had fully agreed. (To be fair at that point I did start to realise that he was quite manipulative and might actually have known what he was signing.) I got no joy with the council and they stopped replying to my emails and as the CRC said he had capacity to litigate I referred him to a firm of housing lawyers who emailed me to say he had been aggressive and abusive and they had to call the police.
I gave up at that point but there is an interesting postscript as I have just had a call from the manager of the supported accommodation to say that the council reinstated his tenancy but have renewed the application for an injunction! (That is the first I heard of it) I am not happy to refer him to housing lawyers again but at least this time he is going in person.