A woman and her family face being evicted from her childhood home by Bristol City Council after both her parents died within three years of each other. Katie Whiteman lives in the council property in Knowle where she grew up, but now with a big family of her own, she says she’s facing homelessness a year after her mum died.
The 35-year-old has been told by council housing chiefs that she has to leave her home, but she is fighting for the right to stay and secured a last-minute reprieve at Bristol Civil Court earlier this month. Katie and her family always lived in council houses in South Bristol, and moved to the one in Springleaze, Knowle, when she was 14 back in 2002. Her father died in 2019, and soon after her mum was diagnosed with cancer.
After her dad died, she returned to live at the family home permanently with her young family, to care for her mum, who sadly passed away last March. Katie now lives in the home with her husband Mark and their blended family of up to five children, who live there all or part of the week.
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But now the family are facing the prospect of homelessness because Bristol City Council said they can’t stay there - and won’t offer them any alternative. The council now say Katie and the family are squatting - even though she’s been paying the rent every month for years, and still does - and have started legal proceedings to evict them.
The first hearing in March was deferred after Katie’s brother died just days before, but the couple attended court in Redcliffe on Tuesday May 16, and were told in the summons letter they could face eviction as early as that same day. She said the prospect of being thrown out of her childhood home had taken a huge toll on her mental health, but she had been encouraged by hundreds of messages of support from friends, neighbours and strangers in Knowle Park and Knowle West.
At court, the case was adjourned again until July, to allow Katie time to mount a defence. The case rests on the council’s policy of ‘succession’, and whether council homes can be passed on to the children of the original tenants.
Why is the council evicting her?
The council’s legal team told the court on Tuesday that after her father died in 2019, Katie’s mum signed a new agreement which was effectively the ‘succession’ handover. It’s Bristol City Council’s policy that succession on council homes can only happen once, but Katie said she is disputing what happened in her case, and pleading for her situation to be taken into account.
The complicated case has shone a light on the city council's 'succession policy', which was tightened up some years ago to limit the number of times a council tenancy could be passed on within a family to just once. In court, the council's legal representative confirmed that the council would not be able to produce the original tenancy agreement signed by Katie's parents when they moved in when she was a teenager.
This, she says, is important, because if her mum had signed it, then Katie said her mum would not have needed to sign a 'succession' agreement when her husband died. Therefore, she thinks she should be entitled to the succession tenancy of the house, after her mum died.
“The council can’t provide the original tenancy agreement that my parents signed more than 20 years ago, they say they’ve lost it,” she told Bristol Live. “So I don’t know who signed that. It could be that it was just my mum who signed it, in which case she didn’t need to sign again after my dad died.
“It could be that both of them signed it back in 2002, in which case she was already on the tenancy agreement, so surely she could just have carried on being the tenant. What I do know is that, after my dad died, the council got my mum to sign this thing.
"She’d just lost her husband, she’d just been diagnosed with cancer, and the council wouldn’t let me help her, wouldn’t let me see it and wouldn’t put my name on it,” she claimed.
There was also a question mark raised in court about the council’s terms and conditions on its successions policy, and the judge in the case asked the council to produce what it would have been when the couple originally took on the house in Knowle Park. The council said the policy on succession has changed in recent years, which effectively stops council homes being automatically passed on to grown up children who still live at home.
Bristol Live asked Bristol City Council for a response to Mrs Whiteman's situation, and its decision to pursue legal action to evict her and the family. The council took ten days to finally confirm that, although it disputes the facts around Mrs Whiteman's version of her situation, it would not be commenting on the specifics of the case, because of the ongoing legal proceedings.
Bristol Live understands that Mrs Whiteman's case did go before a council housing panel earlier this year to see if there were special circumstances that could allow her and the family to stay, but the panel ruled there were not enough special circumstances, so the council could attempt to retake possession of the house.
Bristol Live also understands that one sticking point is the time Mrs Whiteman spent away from the family home in the late 2010s - she said it was only six months - which the council decided meant she has not had long-term continuous residency at the house since she was a child.
Local community activist Nick Haskins, said everyone in the community was supporting Katie. “This makes absolutely no sense to anyone,” he said. “Mrs Whiteman has always paid her rent, been a model tenant and an asset to the community here, and the council are making her and her family homeless. Worse than that they are saying they can’t find her somewhere else to live.
"So she’ll be on the street and they’ll all have to report as being homeless to the council office the day they evict her, at which point they’ll have to find the family somewhere to live,” he added.
“Mrs Whiteman is a well-respected member of the community, and all her neighbours have testified to her good character. She’s always there to offer help and support to anyone in need, and her children are well-behaved and respectful towards their neighbours. The loss of her parents, coupled with the threat of eviction, has taken a significant toll on her mental health,” he added.
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