Who are we?

We are StreetLaw Brighton, a group of Law Students from Sussex Law School, who are fighting the heartbreaking treatment of homeless communities in our city of Brighton and Hove.  We are working in collaboration with Friends and Family of Travellers (FFT) and the No Fixed Abode (NFA) Residents Association.

Why do we need your support?

We need your help to bring a landmark legal challenge against Brighton and Hove Council, on the use of Public Spaces Protection Orders (PSPOs) that unlawfully target homeless and Travellers in the city. The laws give the authorities the power to move and displace the homeless from certain areas around the city, making it a criminal offence if they refuse to move. 

Please contribute and share our page!

We don’t believe homelessness is a crime, and hope that you don’t either.

New government guidelines published in December 2017, state that PSPOs should not be used to target the homeless, and yet Brighton and Hove Council are continuing to do so.  

We believe that the Council are now in breach of these guidelines. Under the AntiSocial Behaviour Crime and Policing Act 2014, a public spaces protection order must be published in accordance with regulations made by the Secretary of State.

We ask that the orders lawfully be stopped so as not to target vulnerable communities by criminalising behaviour that is not anti-social in nature.

Based on figures provided by Homeless Link, Brighton and Hove is second in the country to Westminster for being an authority with the highest number of rough sleepers, seeing an increase from 2016 to 2017 by almost a third. 

We feel it is deplorable, that during a time of cuts to legal aid, housing benefit, homelessness services, the ending of social housing, rising rents, insecure tenancies, lack of Traveller sites and the criminalisation of occupying empty residential property for shelter, that those who have succumbed to the street, are now being cleansed even further.  

Please help us in our fight to stop this unlawful attack on some of the most vulnerable in our society.

What good will the legal challenge do?

By challenging these orders, we can ensure that no street homeless or Travellers are unfairly moved on, displaced, treated inhumanly and suffer further distress as a result of the unlawful use of these powers, both here in Brighton as well as across the rest of the country.

This is a test case and so if successful, could set a precedent for the unlawful use of PSPOs against homeless communities, not just in Brighton, but beyond.

How much money are we raising and why?

We would like to raise £10, 000 through Crowd Justice to instruct a solicitor, a barrister, and cover the judicial review application and further court costs.

We have Saimo Chahal QC of Bindmans solicitors and Marc Willers QC of Garden Court Chambers representing us.

What is the next stage in the case?

As soon as we gather all the funds we need, we can start initial meetings with our lawyers in order to bring about a judicial review application.

Please Share and Donate

Please share and donate to join our fight to protect those who do not have a fixed abode and face discrimination on a daily basis. 

With love and hope,

StreetLaw Brighton:

Emilia Capitelli
Nikolaos Pourpoutidis
Zoe Teague
Lily Rose McMurray
Mareike van Nieuwkoop
Andrei Mazur
Timi Alalade
Rachel Bangura
Sandi Gendi
Mealey Jade MacDonald
Efhalia Lygaki
Elysia Gunn

StreetLaw Tutor Lucy Finchett-Maddock

StreetLaw Artist in Residence Dan Hignell-Tully