Background
Helen is a solicitor who joined Deighton Pierce Glynn in September 2021. Previously Helen worked at Duncan Lewis Solicitors, where she worked as a caseworker, trainee solicitor and qualified as a solicitor in March 2021.
Prior to her legal career, Helen worked in the aid sector, assisting humanitarian responses to refugee flows, displaced people, conflict and natural disasters around the world.
Expertise
Helen represents clients in judicial review claims, focusing on migrant support challenges.
She routinely represents asylum seekers and care leavers seeking adequate accommodation and support from the Home Office or Local Authorities. Her recent cases have focused on helping people to secure accommodation that will allow them continue accessing mental health treatment or vital support networks, securing adequate accommodation for pregnant women prior to the birth of their children, and challenging long delays in moving families with children from temporary to longer term accommodation.
She also represents asylum seeking care leavers whose local authority support has been terminated, and clients with disabilities who require support and accommodation from their local authority.
Following the return of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in August 2021, Helen assisted former interpreters for the British Army in Afghanistan to challenge refusals of their visa applications by the Home Office, securing reversals of the decisions and entry to the UK for these clients and their families. She is also assisting individuals who have been issued with notices of intent to remove them to Rwanda to challenge the Home Office’s refusal to process their claims in the UK. Helen is instructed in a claim against Dorset Council challenging their decision that they do not have jurisdiction to exercise planning control over the Bibby Stockholm, a barge being used to accommodate asylum seekers.
Significant cases in which Helen has acted include:
- CVN, R (On the Application Of) v London Borough of Croydon [2023] EWHC 464 (Admin) – A care leaver successfully challenged the local authority’s decision to terminate his support (including accommodation and financial support) under the ‘leaving care’ provisions of the Children Act 1989. The Court found that terminating the Claimant’s support would breach his rights under Article 3 ECHR. The Court also found that the termination was a disproportionate interference with the Claimant’s right to education under Article 2 Protocol 1 ECHR.
- SB & Anor, R (On the Application Of) v London Borough Of Newham [2023] EWHC 2701 (Admin) – The Claimants (a disabled man and his mother, his full time carer) successfully challenged the local authority’s decision to terminate their support under the Care Act 2014. The Court re-affirmed the position that an individual’s eligibility for asylum accommodation is not relevant to the question of eligibility for local authority accommodation under the Care Act, and there is no requirement for ‘specialist’ or ‘residential’ accommodation in order to be eligible. The correct legal test is whether an individual has ‘accommodation-related’ care needs, i.e. needs for care and support ‘of a sort which is normally provided in the home’ and would be ‘effectively useless if he had no home’.
Helen is an accredited Level 2 senior caseworker and supervisor under the Law Society’s Immigration and Asylum Accreditation Scheme.