I am working with the Somali community in a London Borough.

Many Somali tenants are in arrears and have been threatened with eviction, made agreements for direct deductions because of failures to declare changes of circumstance primarily because of age changes, leaving school and similar.

95% of Somali parents are illiterate in Somali and English.

We are well past dates for appeal under HB rules. Many of the C of C's should be minimal or nil deductions because the young people are NEET.

Has anyone any suggestions about how to get these arrears written off or what action to take?

This is probably a general problem with bme communities that effects claimants across London.

BME communities also are often badly housed, and rent arrears mean no rehousing!

By the way, can you imagine the fun a not fluent in English Somali has talking to a Glaswegian at a Job Centre Plus office?

If it is the case that your clients are all in one borough, then surely a positive approach would be to get in touch with the local authority revenue & benefit team, who deal with housing and council tax benefit, as well as the housing department, to see what, if any, action could be undertaken by, and with, them to improve the situation.

If you can provide statistics, case studies, examples of the difficulties, etc then this should aid your endeavours. If you can involve any other local agencies, such as law centre, CAB, community groups etc, then so much the better. For example, Plumstead Law Centre (PLC) have done good work in the past with Greenwich Council on their rent arrears policy, and use of bailiffs. Click on this link for a pdf copy of a report from Lasa for more details of PLC and this kind of work (see p.10).

Good luck.

Thanks, already starting discussions with the LA. However this is not only a problem with this council, but probably replicated nationally with many bme groups. Is there any experience in UK of legal action that notes systems and processes were almost guaranteed to go wrong, and therefore fail natural justice.

I vaguely remember Burgoyne SA v Ministry of Agriculture, but probably have a mad idea of replicating Brokovitch in the UK!

Clive, if you are past the date for submitting an appeal but the decisions are clearly wrong eg. non dep deductions where there should be none why not try revision on grounds of official error. Don't know what NEET is, in Lancashire it is what comes after day!

"NEET" - Not in Employment, Education or Training.