Grandmother loses marathon eviction battle with Glasgow 2014 Games

Published on Thursday 17 March 2011 18:29

A WOMAN faces eviction from her home today after losing an 11th-hour legal battle to remove her from the property, which is to be demolished for the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2014.

Margaret Jaconelli, 52, managed to keep sheriff officers at bay beyond a noon deadline, while her lawyers argued her case in the Court of Session in Edinburgh.

However, the reprieve was ended when the judge rejected the grandmother's attempt to prolong her fight to stay in the flat in Ardenlea Street, Dalmarnock, which has been home to her family for 34 years.

The tenement block lies on a site earmarked for the athletes' village for the Games, but demolition has been held up while Mrs Jaconelli and Glasgow City Council argued over compensation and alternative accommodation.

The council acquired the property under a compulsory purchase order, and Mrs Jaconelli was offered 30,000. She dug in her heels and the sum was increased to around 90,000, but still no agreement was reached. She was reported to be looking for 360,000, although she has denied this.

Others in the tenement have moved out, leaving Mrs Jaconelli and her husband Jack, a builder, as the last remaining residents. The couple claim they have had to live without any local services, removing rubbish themselves and no longer have a working postcode.

The council obtained an eviction order from a sheriff who dismissed Mrs Jaconelli's grounds of opposition to it. Sheriff Charles McFarlane, QC, said there was nothing to suggest alternative properties offered to her by the council were unsuitable, and he commented: "What is at the forefront of the appellant's thinking is quite clearly compensation."

This week, the ruling was upheld by Sheriff Principal James Taylor who refused a request for leave to appeal to the Court of Session.

In the face of the sheriff principal's judgment, Mrs Jaconelli's lawyers used a different tactic to secure a hearing in the Court of Session. They initiated a new action, seeking to have the eviction order deemed flawed and set aside. Pending a full hearing on that argument, they asked Lord Uist to immediately grant a temporary suspension of the order, putting the eviction on ice.

When the hearing began, the judge was told that the eviction had been planned for noon, and it was unlikely that legal submissions by lawyers for Mrs Jaconelli and the council would be completed by then.Lord Uist said he was not going to have a gun held to his head, and Kenneth McBrearty, counsel for the council, assured the judge that the eviction would not proceed while the hearing continued.

Mr McBrearty said the compulsory purchase order was not being challenged.

The temporary stay on eviction was lifted after three-and-a-half hours when Lord Uist delivered his decision, announcing that he had not been persuaded that there were grounds for granting interim suspension of the eviction order.

Under the glare of a media scrum, the couple were served with a second eviction notice at 11:30am yesterday.

Mr Jaconelli refused to open the door to the officials and forced them to hand the notice to his wife via the living-room window.

Speaking later, she said: "I still feel Glasgow City Council is stealing my property off me. They're breaching my human rights.

"I'm still fighting to stay because this is my home. It is an injustice. It is unbelievable that they can do this to communities.

"We're completely isolated now."

Mrs Jaconelli said that they had not made any provision for the eviction going through, adding that they would "probably stay with family".