So a few days back, we were down at court from 10am to support three squats in court. All three lost.
Ditchling1 argued that technically the papers were specifying only the upstairs part of the property and the judge said “So basically you are asking for an adjournment based on a technicality?” then granted possession to the owner anway.
The PDSA spoke to the prosecuting solicitor and were told they wouldn’t be evicted before Wednesday, although there was no possibility to make a deal. The owners apparently had a tenant ready to move in to convert the shop into a cardshop, who wanted to catch the Valentines Day market – a nice story, but unfortunately they couldn’t provide any evidence of that. The judge didn’t really mind and granted possession, saying he was powerless to do anything else. There are certainly precedents which show otherwise, I don’t think he cared.
Ditchling2 argued that they were living at the cottage, Ditchling Road and not 176c. Despite this being a perfectly legitimate argument the judge was unmoved and ruled in favour of the owner. He very nearly granted possession of 176 ditchling road (a pub) to the council but realised what he was doing just in time.
[All three squats were evicted the following week]