VAUVERT Primary School teacher Jane Kinley is a dedicated and committed member of staff who is very good at her job. Now in her 40s, Guernsey is the first place she could call home after leaving Northern Ireland when she was in her teens.

Yet the Housing Department wanted to throw her out, in clear contravention of her human rights, and paid so little regard for her legal entitlements that the political members of the department cannot even say with clarity why they desired her off the island.

That is one of the reasons the Royal Court has handed down a withering criticism of the department’s many failings in what Housing should have recognised as a sensitive case requiring, as the Deputy Bailiff said, meticulous care.

No one should be under any illusion about how significant this rejection was to Miss Kinley.

As she told the department, ‘…my life is under threat. My home here is threatened’. She also argued that she was being treated differently because she had no children and went on, ‘I am further penalised by not having a significant enough relationship breakdown, which I know has engendered compassion towards colleagues.’

In trying to justify its use of what an earlier appeal described as the department’s ‘drastic power’, Housing in part attempted to rely on a housing needs survey and tried to pass that off as States policy.

As the Deputy Bailiff pointed out in his judgement, however, it was nothing of the sort. Whether that reflected Housing’s incompetence or some other more sinister motive was not explored.

What was highlighted, however, is that the survey, disclosing an alleged shortfall in one-bedroom homes needed locally, took no account of new builds or conversions.

In other words, one of the key pieces of information on which the department relied to justify disrupting people’s lives told only half the story.

No wonder the court declared that the impression given by the department’s handling of the Kinley case is that the political members abjectly failed to consider it properly.

While readers of this column will not be surprised by that, one question remains outstanding.

How many other unfortunates has Housing carved up over the years?