Night Shelters, dwellings and housing benefit

Posted on 19/05/2013 by Giles Peaker

This a late note on OR -v- Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and Isle of Anglesey CC [2013] UKUT 065 (AAC) because, bluntly, I had read it quickly at the time and overlooked its broader significance.

The issue was whether OR could receive housing benefit for his stays in a night shelter hostel. The First Tier Tribunal had held that a hostel was a dwelling for the purposes of the housing benefit regulations, because the regulations said it was. However, the First Tier found that OR was not occupying it as his home.

On appeal to the Upper Tribunal, this was found to be wrong. While the regulations … Read the full post

Priority need

Posted on 15/05/2013 by S

Hotak v Southwark LBC [2013] EWCA Civ 515 concerned a short point on whether an authority was entitled to have regard to the assistance that a homeless person would receive, in the event he became homeless, when determining whether he was vulnerable or not.

The facts of the case were this: Mr Hotak had come to London with his brother. They moved into a flat in Peckham. They were asked to leave the flat and both approached Southwark for assistance (albeit Mr Hotak’s brother at that time was ineligible for assistance and so the application was made in Mr Hotak’s name only).

Southwark accepted that Mr Hotak’s suffered from depression, … Read the full post

Ambling for Justice

Posted on 15/05/2013 by Giles Peaker

We here at Nearly Legal don’t just sit around staring at the ever increasing backlog of cases to write up. Oh no. We do other things too. One of the other things some of us are doing is the London Legal Walk on Monday 20 May.

The aim of the walk is to raise funds for not for profit/free legal advice organisations. This year, the funds are more desperately needed than ever, for reasons that should be obvious to all, cuts in funds from Legal Aid, from Councils and other bodies, allied with increasing demand from prospective clients.

So, some of the NL team will be forming part of the … Read the full post

Being civil

Posted on 14/05/2013 by J

Morshead Mansions has been involved in a quite astonishing amount of litigation. Bailii throws up 13 hits (here), cases in the LVT, Lands Tribunal, High Court and Court of Appeal. It’s really must be the most awful burden on all those involved. And now, there is another case to add to the list, Di Marco v Morshead Mansions Ltd [2013] EWHC 1068 (Ch).

Morshead Mansions Ltd is a lessee-owned company. It holds the freehold of (appropriately enough) Morshead Mansions, a block of 104 or so flats. It has two different ways of raising money. The first (and most common) is via the service charge. It seems that, at … Read the full post

Yet another one…

Posted on 12/05/2013 by J

The Leasehold Reform Act 1967 gives qualifying long leaseholders of houses the right, inter alia, to acquire the freehold. The definition of “house” is quite technical, but, in essence, it turns on whether it could reasonably be called a house (even if it could reasonably be called something else). There is a quite eye-watering amount of law on this issue, most recently Day v Hosebay Ltd; Howard de Walden v Lexgorge [2012] UKSC 41 (our note here).

In general terms, many of these cases are worth quite a lot of money. Which means that they get appealed (and appealed, and appealed). In Henley and another v Cohen [2013] … Read the full post

Bedroom Tax Judicial Review update

Posted on 11/05/2013 by Giles Peaker

Just to note that the 10 joined bedroom tax Judicial Review claims (for initial details see our note) are listed for full hearing on Wednesday to Friday next week (15-17 May). The claims involve a range of challenges to the regulations involving disabled adults, disabled children and children unable to share rooms for other reasons.

More details as soon as we get them.

… Read the full post

Lets try not to break this one – HLPA and the Equality Act 2010

Posted on 11/05/2013 by J

This may not be a universally held view, but I think we housing lawyers aren’t really very good at equality law.

We were very late to the party with the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (the first higher court case wasn’t until 2003, with North Devon Homes v Brazier [2003] EWHC 574 (QB); [2003] HLR 59 and we didn’t get into the Court of Appeal until Manchester CC v Romano [2004] EWCA Civ 834; [2004] HLR 47). Then, of course, we broke the Act with Malcolm v Lewisham LBC [2008] UKHL 43; [2008] HLR 41). And, at least as far as I’m aware, there isn’t anything substantive on how the Equality … Read the full post

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