Stephen Evans has successfully assisted LB Haringey to defend a judicial review claim brought by a private homeowner against the Council’s decision to fell a street tree. In R (Brenner) v LB Haringey [2024] EWHC 2325 (Admin) a tree was implicated in causing subsidence to the Claimant’s home, and that of his next door neighbour. The complaint by the Claimant was that, in the context of a decision that the tree should be removed, his insurers had revised their agreement to underpin his house, and were seeking a less expensive remedy. However, the Claimant’s neighbour had issued a claim in the civil courts against the Council seeking the cost of underpinning their house, but only if the Council did not fell the tree. The Council’s decision was made at a time when there were outstanding complaints by the Claimant and his neighbour about their respective insurers to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) which were yet to be the subject of a final decision. The High Court held that the Council was lawfully entitled to make its decision before the FOS final decision, and the FOS decisions were simply a matter of the relationships between insurer and insured and not a matter for the Council; what the Council did have to deal with was the actual civil claim against it. The claim for JR was dismissed accordingly. A copy of the full decision can be read here.
17th September 2024