COUNCIL officers are warning York councillors against using a proposed new law to make it easier for rioters to be evicted from their council homes.
Currently council tenants can only be evicted for antisocial behaviour if they carry it out in or near their homes.
But after the August riots across the country, the Government started a consultation on extending the law so that tenants can be evicted if they riot or commit antisocial crimes anywhere in the UK.
Several councils were embroiled in controversy when they said they would seek to throw convicted rioters out of their homes, including one London borough that wanted to evict a family because the tenant’s underage son had been a rioter.
Coun Tracey Simpson-Laing, City of York Council’s housing boss, will decide the council’s response to the Government consultation on the proposed new law next Tuesday But in a report, Steve Waddington, York’s assistant director of housing, warns Coun Simpson-Laing about the proposed new law.
He said: “There is a question as to the proportionality and the likelihood that it will be successfully challenged at court.”
He recommends the council tells the Government the new proposals may be too severe and would discriminate against council tenants because owner occupiers who riot would not lose their homes. He also warns the council could be forced to rehouse people they evict under the proposed law.
He said: “If a family was evicted because of the actions of a non-tenant within the household, the authority would struggle to argue that the family had made themselves intentionally homeless.”
City of York Council, like all housing authorities, has to find homes for local homeless people unless they deliberately make themselves homeless.
The officer does say of the new power: “In extreme circumstances, it would be a useful additional tool.”
He recommends the council welcomes proposals to tighten up on existing procedures to evict council tenants for criminal and anti-social behaviour in or near their homes.
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