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HAZ Manor squatters told to go
End of the road for Exodus members?
A judge has told a group of squatters that they must leave the former hospital building where they live, despite their plea that eviction would violate their human rights.
Some members of the Exodus 'social regeneration' movement have lived at the former St Margaret's Hospital site, just off the A6 near Streatley, since 1993.
They improved the derelict building and named it HAZ (Housing Action Zone) Manor.
The residents used to pay a peppercorn rent to Beds County Council, now Central Beds Council, but relations deteriorated and for the past two years the authority has been battling to remove the six remaining residents from the site.
The Court of Appeal decided on Thursday that their case could not be reviewed, despite an intervention from the government's communities and local government minister, who wanted the case to be referred back to Luton County Court.
The Exodus members had argued that eviction would violate their 'right to family and home life' under Article 8 of the Human Rights Convention, and that they were entitled to a court hearing to consider their personal circumstances.
But the fact that they were now trespassers, the court ruled, meant they now had no right to a review of the facts, unless the landlord agreed to suspend the eviction order it won last July.
Central Beds Council said it would now exercise its right to take possession of the site "in the near future".
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Monday 13 February 2012
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