Credit: Creative Commons
Editor-in-Chief
GLC is a welfare law and housing specialist centre in Glasgow, and say they will do everything they can to defend the residents
Govan Law Centre are working with MPs, Glasgow City Council and various charities in order to protect up to 300 asylum seekers recently threatened with eviction by Serco.
Serco is a landlord in Glasgow with a Home Office contract to house asylum seekers. The company are reportedly proposing to raise legal proceedings to summarily evict people who are asylum seekers in Glasgow.
GLC is a welfare law and housing specialist centre in Glasgow, and say they will do everything they can to defend the residents. The organisation’s Principal Solicitor and Solicitor Advocate Mike Dailly is also the University of Glasgow Student Representative Council’s legal adviser. In a statement he said: “These are very vulnerable families living in our city and they deserve full legal protection to ensure that due process is being followed. We have a number of our senior lawyers looking at this right now.
“We are convinced that Serco are proposing to act unlawfully. And we will be taking cases before the Scottish courts. This is a complex area of law and its very unlikely vulnerable people can just be summarily evicted in the way Serco propose.
“Scots common law has long since prohibited eviction without due process of law against residential occupiers. In Scotland, it is generally necessary to obtain a decree for ejection from the court as opposed to taking the law into you own hands – known as summary eviction or eviction brevi manu – which is generally a criminal offence and a civil wrong.”
