Background
Sasha joined Deighton Pierce Glynn in 2008 and qualified as a solicitor in 2012. She has been a partner since 2020 and is Head of the Migrant Rights Department. Prior to joining Deighton Pierce Glynn she worked at a law centre, the Citizens Advice Bureau and a refugee mental health advice centre.
Expertise
Sasha is a specialist in public law, human rights and discrimination law. She has experience of conducting high-profile judicial review claims across a wide range of subject areas including migrants’ rights, women’s rights, discrimination and equality duties.
Sasha has been described in the Chambers Directory as “a power house … very bright and dedicated – she goes far beyond the call of duty to support her clients. Sasha goes out of her way to make sure clients fully understand every step of the process and is always on hand to explain issues.”
Sasha’s migrants’ rights work encompasses: securing life-saving hospital treatment for foreign nationals; successfully challenging unlawful decisions to refuse to allow former Afghan interpreters for the British army and their families entry to the UK; challenging decisions to detain and remove victims of trafficking to Rwanda; overturning the Home Office’s refusal to make additional weekly payments to pregnant women living in hotels; obtaining accommodation for homeless families from social services under the Children Act; getting accommodation for people with care needs arising from physical disabilities or poor mental health under the Care Act; ensuring care leavers are properly supported and accommodated; getting people suitable Home Office accommodation; and challenging the Home Office’s failure to monitor its multi million pound contracts on asylum support and accommodation.
Sasha has represented clients who were successful in getting the Home Office to change its policies on protecting people from abuse in shared asylum support accommodation and dealing with urgent applications from destitute people for schedule 10 accommodation. She has also represented clients who successfully challenged the Home Office’s failure to have a lawful system in place to provide disabled people with suitable asylum support accommodation which has resulted in a new process for monitoring vulnerable people, and prevented the Home Office from evicting thousands of people from asylum support accommodation during the pandemic.
Discrimination and Equality
Sasha has been successful in challenging consultations and equality impact assessments where proposals would greatly affect large groups of people. She relies on the public sector equality duty to effectively challenge decisions. These cases include: forcing local authorities to rethink strip club licensing decisions; challenging the National Police Chief’s Council Sex Work Guidance; the Home Office discontinuing with its “Go home or get arrested” advertising campaign; Lambeth council agreeing to reinstate the full benefits of the Taxicard scheme to residents with serious mobility impairments or severely sight impaired; NHS Haringey carrying out an equality impact assessment in relation to the interpreting services it provides to patients at GP surgeries; a major NHS Trust withdrawing its decision to close all of its specialist mental health support services; and a challenge of the Independent Office for Police Conduct’s decision not to uphold a complaint against the police when a client was being unlawfully evicted by her landlord.
Sample Cases
Significant cases in which Sasha has acted include:
R (HA and Others) v SSHD [2023] EWHC 1876 (Admin) – The Home Office had acted unlawfully in withholding additional weekly payments to pregnant women and for children under 3 years old living in Home Office hotels. This has resulted in the implementation of these payments for thousands of families.
R (CDE) v Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council [2023] EWHC 14 (Admin) – Challenge to the council’s decision to adopt a policy of being able to grant an unlimited number of licences to strip clubs. Many women objected to this proposal because they were concerned about the impact strip clubs have on attitudes towards, and the treatment by men of, women and girls by contributing towards a culture in which women and girls are objectified, commodified, exploited, harassed, discriminated against and subject to sex-based violence. The council treated these sex equality-based concerns as “moral concerns” and ignored them. The decision was quashed for failing to carry out a lawful consultation and failing to comply with the public sector equality duty.
R (AKN) v SSHD – Challenge to the Home Office’s decision to evict thousands of people out of asylum support accommodation before step 4 of the government’s roadmap out of lockdown.
R (KMI) v SSHD [2021] EWHC 477 – Challenge to the Home Office’s refusal to provide s.4 accommodation during the pandemic. The Court directed a bespoke streamline procedure for interim relief for destitute people who had appealed the Home Office’s refusal to provide them with s.4 accommodation. Also see here.
R (DMA) v SSHD [2020] EWHC 3416 (Admin) – The Home Office’s failure to monitor the provision of asylum support accommodation to disabled people was in breach of the public sector equality duty by failing to have due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination and the need to advance equality of opportunity between disabled people and non-disabled people in receipt of asylum support. The Home Office had breached the duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people by failing to implement an effective system of prioritisation and failing to monitor the number of disabled people who it owed a duty to accommodate.
R (XN) v SSHD [2020] EWHC 2117 (Admin) – Challenge to the Home Office’s failure to have a policy in place to protect people who experience violence and anti-social behaviour in shared asylum support accommodation. Home Office agreed to amend its policy and pay the victim damages caused by the experience.
R (SM) v SSHD – Home Office agreed to amend policy and treat applications for schedule 10 support for destitute people urgently.
Pryce v LB Southwark – Test case at the Court of Appeal on the application of Article 20 on the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and the Court of Justice of the European Union’s decision in Zambrano on eligibility for housing and social welfare.
RELATED NEWS
