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Breach of Human Rights

There is a lot of nonsense written in the press about the Human Rights Act. Really, all that the Human Rights Act does is this: it makes the European Convention on Human Rights part of UK Law. So if a public service such as the police (or a prison, or a court etc.) breaches one of your human rights, they may have acted unlawfully and the Human Rights Act allows you to sue them for damages for this.

The main rights that tend to be relevant in our area of law are:

  • Article 2 – the right to life
  • Article 3 – prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment
  • Article 5 – right to liberty
  • Article 6 – right to a fair trial
  • Article 8 – right to private and family life
  • Article 9 – right to freedom of thought / religion
  • Article 11 – right to peaceful assembly 

If you think your human rights have been breached, and you are considering taking legal action, you should act quickly.

There is a time limit of 1 year in which to have the case issued in court.

Recent Cases

We act for a client who was unlawfully evicted from his home, assaulted during the course of that unlawful eviction and was then arrested by police. While we continue with a claim against Kent police for their part in the incident, we have in the meantime settled a Human Rights Act claim brought against the county court that granted a possession order to our client’s landlord, contrary to the government embargo on possession proceedings imposed as a result of the recent Covid crisis. The Ministry of Justice agreed to pay our client damages of £1,000 and his legal costs.