Shaun Livingston

Shaun qualified in 2013, and joined TV Edwards in October 2020. He is a qualified Legal Aid supervisor in the field of community care.

He was named as an “Associate to Watch” in Chambers and Partners UK 2025 in his specialist fields of Administrative and Public Law and Court of Protection. He is described in the Legal 500 as “a very bright lawyer practising in Court of Protection welfare work who is clearly knowledgeable of both legal principles and practical matters” and as having “an exceptional mind and sharp acuity that is extremely reassuring”.

Shaun acts in complex Court of Protection welfare cases, and is regularly instructed by the Official Solicitor, as well as by professional advocates. Shaun has been appointed as an Accredited Legal Representative by the Law Society, a qualification which allows him to act for incapacitous clients directly in the Court of Protection without a litigation friend.

Within his public law work, Shaun represents clients with a wide variety of Community Care needs, including under the Care Act 2014, Children Act 1989 and Mental Health Act 1983. As part of his caseload, Shaun represents children in need and care leavers who require a range of support and disabled adults whose needs have not been met by the public bodies obliged to do so. He takes a particular interest in acting for care leavers who are often left without the necessary support to allow for a successful transition to adulthood, and cases which may require recourse in both the Court of Protection and Administrative Court; his experience in both courts makes him well suited to advise in such matters.

Shaun has successfully challenged local authorities who have failed to provide for the welfare needs of vulnerable migrant families and individuals who are restricted from accessing mainstream public funds.

Notable cases

• ZB (1) & DB (2) v London Borough of Croydon [2023] EWHC 489 (Admin). In this case Shaun secured residential educational placements for two children with complex disabilities, as well as damages of £10,000 each to compensate them for breaches of their human right to education. Such awards are unusual and rarely reported.
• DL (by her litigation friend the Official Solicitor v London Borough of Enfield [2019] EWCOP B1. Shaun acted for DL and successfully resisted an application by the local authority to dismiss the proceedings; had the application been successful, it would have made it significantly harder for individuals deprived of their liberty in care settings to be able to access their rights to challenge that deprivation in the Court of Protection.
• Securing a move for a disabled adult who lacked capacity to make his own decision to his preferred accommodation, a bungalow purchased for him by his family. The local authority had previously refused to fund the individual’s care in the bungalow until Shaun prepared pre-action correspondence challenging this decision.
• Obtaining damages, and declarations from a local authority that it had breached Shaun’s client’s human rights by unlawfully issuing care proceedings and providing inadequate care to the client, a child with significant disabilities including deafblindness.
• Successfully challenging a local authority’s decision that a child whose single mother was unable to claim benefits due to her immigration status was not a child in need; Shaun’s correspondence resulted in the family being provided with financial support and accommodation
• Persuading a local authority to depart from its usual policy and fund a care leaver’s application for British citizenship, which he considered vital to his sense of identity and security.
• Achieving a significant damages settlement in respect of a client who had been unlawfully deprived of his liberty when a child in his home as a result of a disproportionate care plan put in place for him by his local authority, who should have applied to the Court for authorisation at the time it formulated the care plan. The Court found that the client’s Article 5 and Article 8 rights as protected by the European Convention on Human Rights had been breached, and ordered the local authority to prepare lawful community care assessments and care plans for the client.
• Successfully challenging a decision by a local authority to end the accommodation and support provided to an adult with renal failure without secure immigration status and No Recourse to Public Funds. The local authority had argued that the adult could safely return to his country of origin, but he had not been there in decades and the vital dialysis keeping him alive in the UK was not available in his country of origin.
• Ensuring a migrant family with No Recourse to Public Funds was able to return to the borough in which they had settled, which was vital to the mental stability and welfare of an 8 year old autistic child whose presentation had deteriorated following the family’s local authority moving the family to a completely different area, which meant the child had been unable to attend his school. After Shaun became involved, the family was returned to the original borough and the child was able to return to his school
• Preventing an incapacitous man with schizophrenia from being discharged from hospital to a placement in a different part of the country to the area in which he had been born, bred and in which he strongly wished to remain, when his local authority had previously maintained it was not possible for him to remain in his area. Following Shaun’s issuing the matter in the Court of Protection, the matter concluded with an order that it was in his best interests to live in a local placement subsequently found by the local authority.

Recommendations