In May 2008 Khyra Ishaq, a seven year old girl had died suffering starvation and abuse at the home of her mother Angela Gordon and her partner Abuhamza the step father of Khyra.

All six brothers and sisters of Khyra had suffered horrific abuse at the hands of their mother Angela Gordon and her partner Abuhamza.

The five surviving siblings of Khyra Ishaq are suing their local council for failing to protect them and save their sister's life.

The brothers and sisters have filed a claim against Birmingham City Council because the council was already told about their plight four months before she died.

Gordon and Abuhamza admitted manslaughter of Khyra. The pair also admitted five counts of child cruelty at Birmingham Crown Court in March 2010.

Khyra weighed just 2st 9lb, had 60 external injuries and lay dying with pneumonia and meningitis for two days while her mother was downstairs eating a takeaway with her partner.

Two of the siblings almost died in the hospital because of the re-feeding syndrome a phenomenon which was first seen in the Nazi concentration camps where the shock of eating food causes the body to shutdown.

Khyra and the other children were all starved and subjected to horrific punishment regime and a five month detention, involving beatings with a cane.

If the children were caught taking food the evil pair made them stand outside in the cold and forced them to over eat until they threw up as part of a chilling punishment regime.

Following the appalling abuse Khyra was reduced to scavenging bread from a neighbour’s bird table and lost 40 per cent of her body weight.

Litigation solicitors acting for the five surviving children, who cannot be named for legal reasons, have filed a ‘substantial’ claim against the city for allegedly breaching duty of care to them.

The allegations made in the claim letter were that Khyra’s death could have been prevented if the council had taken all of the children into care if they had acted in time when teachers first raised the alarm. It appeared that the teachers of the children had done everything in their power to assist the children but their efforts were ignored by the social services department.

The children’s biological father Ishaq Abuzaire is also pursuing proceedings on behalf of himself for the psychological injuries he has suffered since Khyra’s death and the abuse of the surviving children.

Tony Hall, a partner at Birmingham-based legal aid firm confirmed that Ishaq and the children were granted legal aid to pursue the substantial claims against the city.

A spokesman for Birmingham City Council confirmed that the council had received a letter of claim in this case.

Following consultation the Legal Services Board has said that it has decided to make the core will-writing and estate administration services reserved and another consultation has been launched with further details of its plans. As such, advisors providing those services would need to be regulated by an approved body.

The board was pushing for the move to protect consumers, as it believes consumers require better protection against unregulated services providers.

While it has recommended that tax advice relating to the preparation of the will would be a reserved service, it also says in the latest consultation that it was not its intentions that the proposed reservation of will-writing saw service providers who didn’t write wills within the scope of legal services regulation.

The provision of inheritance tax advice would not come within the reservations unless provided in conjunction with the core reserved activities of will-writing and estate management.

The consultation contains an example in which an accountant provides advice about distributing a client's estate on his death, and what needs to be contained in the client's will. As no will is written on this occasion, the service provided does not come under the proposed new reservations.

Commenting on the latest developments, the ICAEW said it appreciated a step which could potentially impact ICAEW chartered accountants working in practice who already provide estate administration services. Like the vast majority of professions who offer similar services, they act with integrity and in the best interests of their clients.

It was critical for ICAEW to ensure that they can continue to do so and we would work to ensure that it has in place a regulatory solution that will enable its members to continue to offer these services to their clients.

The institute has been consulting on its plan to become a licensed regulator so its members could offer services in probate disputes and set up multi-disciplinary practices.

According to Wilkins Kennedy LLP, individual insolvencies were hitting the UK’s older generations increasingly hard.

The latest available data from the Insolvency Service shows that the 35-44 year old group has the largest number of individual insolvencies while 45-54 groups has gone up to 25% in 2011 up by 10 percent in a decade.

It says that the number of individual insolvencies for over 55 year olds increased between 2009 and 2011 while in other age groups it fell.

Wilkins Kennedy warned that it was older generations that were hit hardest by insolvency.

Anthony Cork, Partner at Wilkins Kennedy, says older generations feel the impact of insolvency much harder than other age groups. While those in their twenties or thirties have a chance to really ‘start again’ after entering insolvency, those in their fifties or sixties have much less time to rebuild themselves financially as they approach retirement.


There’s the time factor and, for those wanting to re-enter the jobs market, there’s the risk of age discrimination and potentially the need to re-skill.

Anthony Cork continues for a long time, the post-war generation were seen as having it all: ever-rising standards of living, affordable housing, and, throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, cheap credit.

However, in the aftermath of the financial crisis, things started to catch up with them. The cheap credit has been exhausted and jobs that were once ‘for life’ have become far less secure, while divorce rates amongst Baby Boomers has been jumping too. Loans, redundancy has started to bite, and the costs of contributing to more than one household were taking their toll. It’s going from Baby Boomer to bust.

Wilkins Kennedy is also concerned about the impact that rising insolvencies amongst older people will have on others.

Anthony Cork adds with increased numbers of insolvents approaching retirement government could have a big knock on effect for the welfare budget for younger generations who suddenly have to find means to financially support their parents or grandparents. 

The experience of the Baby Boomers points out how important it is to have a plan for future while in the early stages of career. People do need to adopt a much more long-term view of their personal finances.

The 45-54 year old age group is now the second most common age bracket for insolvencies, with the fall in insolvencies in this group being far less sharp than in other groups.

Anthony Cork concludes saying that the overall level of individual insolvencies was starting to look downwards, and it was particularly true of younger generations. 

However, for older generations, the number of individual insolvencies remains stubbornly high or is getting worse. Those that feel the pain of insolvency hardest are being hit the hardest.

A survey of the social workers by the British Association of Social Workers say that a third of them have said that they were in more debt than a year ago.

They were going into the red with pay cuts and wage freezes bite and had to turn to charity for help. Workers say they were foregoing holidays and struggling to pay for groceries and petrol.

Four-fifths of those surveyed said their pay had been frozen, while 16% have had a pay cut. Many also reported rising costs; 40% reported reduced or axed car allowances and 18% said parking charges had been introduced where this was previously free.

The Social Workers' Benevolent Trust, a small grant giving charity that supports social workers and their dependents who are in financial difficulty, has seen a 60% rise in applications for help compared with last year. 

The trust, which supports working or retired practitioners, often experiencing illness, disability, bereavement, relationship breakdown or loss of employment, finds itself facing its greatest challenges since it was established some 41 years ago.

With sharp decline in the availability of both permanent posts and work through social work agencies has seen greater numbers of social workers finding themselves out of work.

One applicant to the trust wrote that he had been a worker for over 25 years and after a bout of illness was trying to find work but there were no suitable jobs out there though he looked for it on a daily basis.

There problem is evident with the applications for assistance going up, the size of grants requested rising, and the number of grants given was also up. But, until BASW members stepped in and voted unanimously to increase the levy from subscriptions that it pays to the trust, income was down on previous years.

But the most worrying factor was the upsurge of the number of applicants to the trust who have turned to payday loans to help them manage for a short term difficulty but many have ended up in a worse position with extension to those loans and becoming even more indebted.

While most loans of this type are legitimate regulated financial products, they come with exorbitant interest rates and often seem to end up accelerating the downward spiral of debt that some find themselves facing.

With uncertainty looming large over improvement in the situation the trust would have to find further ways to increase its income to meet the increased demands on its limited resources. The additional funding from BASW members was most welcome and a fantastic start but if there was more, many could be helped.