Monthly Archive for January, 2010

Condensed Condensation

By NL on 30/01/2010. 1 Comment

Herelle v South London Family Housing Association Limited, Lambeth County Court, 26 November 2009

Ms Herelle was the assured tenant of SLFHA (now part of Horizon Housing). Her tenancy of the one bed flat began in September 2001. There had been problems with the property since early in the tenancy including mould growth, an unpleasant odour and damp throughout the flat. SLFHA had carried out drylining to the rear bedroom and replaced damp wall plaster to an area of the hallway in 2006. Rotten window frames with fungal growth, present from an early part of the tenancy, were replaced in 2007.

The landlord’s repairing covenants in the tenancy agreement … Read the full post

Posted in assured-tenancy, Disrepair, FLW case note and Housing law - All. Tags: , .

Gatekeeping and an absence of records

By NL on 30/01/2010. 0 Comments

Local Government Ombudsman’s decision:  London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham (09 001 262)

‘Ms Kenza’ (not her real name) approached LB Hammersmith and Fulham as homeless when she had to leave her private rented home following an incident of domestic violence. She was 8 months pregnant.

Hammersmith did not place her in temporary accommodation pending enquiries. Instead officers encouraged her to find accommodation in the private sector. A homeless application was not mentioned by the officers. She was later given a night’s accommodation by the out of hours service and, she asserted, she then spent 4 days sleeping rough in a park.

She complained to the Ombudsman that Hammersmith … Read the full post

Posted in Homeless and Housing law - All. Tags: , .

Tenancy Deposit Protection on Sale and Leaseback

By David Smith on 29/01/2010. 5 Comments

UK Housing Alliance (North West) Ltd v Michael John Francis, Grimsby County Court, 18 June 2009, unreported

An interesting case this involving issues of tenancy deposit protection, contractual penalties and the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contract Regulations 1999.

UK purchased a house in Grimsby from F in October 2007. They let it back to him on an Assured Shorthold Tenancy for a term of ten years at a rental of £520.83 pcm with annual increases of 5%. The purchase price was £125,000 to be paid in two tranches – the first, in the sum of £87,500 to be paid on completion while the second, of £37,500, on the giving up … Read the full post

Posted in Assured Shorthold tenancy, FLW case note and Possession. Tags: , , , , .

HMO Planning Changes and a Consultation

By David Smith on 29/01/2010. 2 Comments

The Department of Communities and Local Government yesterday published a response on their website to a consultation on planning responses to HMOs which was launched back in May 2009.

Briefly, there is concern that certain areas, principally where there are a lot of students are becoming dominated by HMOs. The current powers to control HMOs under Part 2 of the Housing Act 2004 provide limited scope for dealing with this at is not permissible to refuse a licence for an HMO on the basis that there are too many HMOs in the immediate area. The original consultation proposed a number of ways to resolve this issue, centering around an alteration … Read the full post

Posted in FLW article and Regulation and planning. Tags: , .

Transfers and rent arrears

By Dave on 29/01/2010. 1 Comment

The question of the interaction between housing debt and prioritisation for an allocation under Part VI, Housing Act 1996, appears to have been in issue in R(Osei) v Newham LBC Lettings Agency, decided on 27.01.10.  I say “appears to” because, as of yet, no transcript is available – summaries appear on Lawtel and Lexis – and I for one would be grateful of sight of the full transcript (hint hint to Alison Meacher/Hereward & Foster [who acted for Ms Osei] and Lindsay Johnson/Newham [for Newham]).  Essentially, the question was whether it was appropriate for Newham’s choice-based lettings agency to decide that Ms Osei’s rent arrears were sufficient to reduce … Read the full post

Posted in Allocation, FLW case note, Homeless and Housing law - All.

Heffernan v The Rent Service (Again)

By David Smith on 24/01/2010. 0 Comments

Heffernan v Rent Service [2009] EWHC 3539 (Admin)
Mr Heffernan has renewed his battle with Sheffield’s rent officers with a new appearance before the High Court.

The ongoing issue is one in which Sheffield has been attempting to assess H’s entitlement to housing benefits. Essentially this is carried out by the rent officer deciding what is the highest and lowest rents a landlord might reasonably expect to obtain in the locality for an assured tenancy of a property of a similar size and state of repair as the target property and then taking an average. This forms the reference rent by which the benefit entitlement is calculated. In doing this … Read the full post

Posted in Benefits, FLW case note and Housing law - All. Tags: .

Legal Action – Guest Post by Jan Luba and Nic Madge

By NL on 24/01/2010. 20 Comments

We have had a request from Jan Luba QC and HHJ Madge who, as I’m sure you all know, edit the ‘recent developments in housing law’ updates in Legal Action each month. They are looking for feedback on the updates, so we are happy to help with a guest post…


This year will mark the 25th anniversary of the publication of the first of our Recent Developments in Housing Law articles in Legal Action.

We know that many housing practitioners read Recent Developments and we are extremely grateful to those who write to us with notes, transcripts etc, but apart from one evaluation exercise a few years ago, and chats … Read the full post

Posted in Housing law - All and Various (non-housing). Tags: , , .
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