Human Rights legal advice

Our team have a wealth of experience dealing with all types of claims under the Human Rights Act. They will do all that they can in order to uphold and protect your rights and obtain legal remedies, including compensation.

Human Rights issues and claims can arise in many different areas of law such as criminal law, immigration and family law. We have experienced lawyers in all of these areas who work together to ensure clients get the best advice.

We will explore with you all available funding options including legal aid, conditional or deferred fee funding and private funding arrangements.

To learn more about claims under the Human Rights Act and how our team can assist you, please get in touch.

Human Rights Act Claims

The Human Rights Act was created to protect fundamental basic rights. In addition to key human rights not to be subjected to torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. There are many other ways in which Human Rights laws can be used as grounds for a claim or defence to issues, such as possible deportation.

Strict criteria must be met to establish whether there has been a breach of one of the articles under the Act. The threshold is usually very high for proving a claim under any of the articles.

The basic rights include :-

The Human Rights Act 1988 contain a set of broad principles. Breach of these rights often creates life changing damage to people’s lives. Our job as lawyers is to seek justice, either by overturning an unlawful decision at court (known as Judicial Review) and possibly also by financial compensation claims.

Common types of Human Rights Act breaches we advise on include:

• Breaches of Human Rights with immigration where the breach is generally related to the Right to family life

• Misfeasance in public office – this can include where the police or others in a position of authority act unlawfully

• Discrimination (race, sex, disability, etc) – this can arise in many contexts such as a miscarriage of justice or education law breaches

• Breaches of Human Right to freely practice religion - issues can include where employees are not permitted to pray at work.

• Data Protection Act breaches/misuse of private information.

• Negligence by a public body

Time Limits

A claim under the Act must be made in the County courts within 6 months of the alleged unlawful act taking place. This is called the Limitation Period and the courts tend to apply it strictly, meaning that you must act quickly.

Generally speaking, if a person wants to make a claim after that period it is at the court’s discretion whether it grants permission to allow this. The test applied by the court is what is “just and equitable” in the circumstances.

The exception to this rule is for claims which have been referred to a student complaints scheme within 6 months or to the Equality and Human Rights Commission for resolution.

In these instances, the time limit for bringing a claim is increased to 9 months.