I have found myself unaccountably lethargic post-lunch, so when the Chief put us on to the new DCLoG consultation document on “unauthorised tenancies” I jumped at the opportunity to post on it. It’s a beautifully produced document with lots of pictures, about a small but immensely important issue: a borrower, in breach of the mortgage conditions, creates a tenancy of the property; during the currency of that tenancy, the lender takes possession proceedings (or just possession, eg voluntarily); the lender, on standard principles of property law, is not bound by the tenancy; but what should happen to a borrower’s “tenants” who can otherwise be evicted on short notice? Francis’ excellent … Read the full post
Tag Archive for 'private tenancy'
I’m just in the process of marking what feels like thousands of coursework essays on proprietary estoppel and constructive trusts. The thing that gets me – time for a rant – is that my very clever three As students can’t actually write a proper sentence, and split infinitives willy nilly. It just winds me up. So I turned to the much pre-publicised DCLoG response to the Rugg review of private renting which was published today. You can rely on DCLoG civil servants, or so I thought, but what lingers with me after reading it is that it could have been written by one of those very same students because it’s … Read the full post
In apparent confirmation both that the Times is now a tabloid newspaper and that today was a quiet news day, this was the lead story in Saturday’s Times.
I’ll just quote the opening sentence:
Council tenants are being offered £30,000 bribes or cottages by the sea to vacate their homes for credit crunch victims as Britain faces a critical social housing shortage.
The only accurate part of that is the social housing shortage. Funny how that only becomes news when Times readers are getting worried they might need social housing themselves. Nonetheless, there is a critical social housing shortage and it is a serious issue. Sadly not one the Times … Read the full post
Yes, it’s true, another review has been published, this time of the regulation and redress in the UK housing market. And yes, if you’re wondering, this was what the Law Commission did in their Issues paper on proportionate dispute resolution and further analysis. The author this time is Professor Colin Jones, whose biog does not suggest that he has ever been particularly interested, if at all, in this issue although that may be a little unfair. Actually, what he has done here is quite respectable to a point and worthy (in contrast to the disastrous Rugg and Rhodes report – for our review, see here).
Prof Jones … Read the full post
Seven and a half years on, the Law Commission has now completed its work on the reform of housing law with the publication of its final report, Housing: Encouraging Responsible Letting. The Consultation Paper, on which this report is based, voted in favour of a scheme of enforced self-regulation, a scheme with some bite. That has been dropped in this report which now makes various tinkering suggestions such as a national private landlord accreditation scheme and a single code of good housing management practice. The one solid proposal with which everyone can agree (presumably) is the need for a proper regulatory scheme for letting agents. Their major proposal is … Read the full post
A very interesting article by Francis Davey in September’s Legal Action about the Housing Act 2004. The whole piece rewards a read, but two bits caught my eye. We don’t do that many private tenancy possession defences, relatively speaking, so these were new to me.
Where a shorthold assured tenancy started after 6 April 2007, i) the deposit must be held by the landlord in one of the approved tenancy deposit schemes, within 14 days of receiving it and ii) the landlord is to give prescribed information about this to the tenant.
Now, where the landlord fails to do either or both of these, the landlord may not give a … Read the full post
I caught someone from the National Citizens Advice Bureau on BBC Breakfast this morning, commenting on a CAB report on the large number of people in private rented properties in bad condition who are promptly evicted if they complain or do anything about the disrepair.
Anecdotally, I’d certainly support this. We do hear from quite a few private tenants who have received notice or possession orders after raising repairs, or getting an inspection by the local authority environmental health. Often these people have been living in deadful conditions with only silence or worse from the landlord.
As the CAB spokeswoman pointed out, there is little or nothing to stop this … Read the full post
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