[update 19 March. This Message from the Lord Chief Justice to judges in the Civil and Family Courts has been sent out and published this morning. It emphasises the need to move to phone and video hearings wherever possible and to make arrangements...
All the blog posts, most recent first
No new possession claims (for at least 3 months)
The Government has just announced emergency legislation to do the following: Stop any new possession claims (social and private tenancies) being issued at court for the next three months (at least). Introduce a new pre-action protocol for...
Emergency measures
Ahead of the government introducing the bill for emergency Coronavirus related measures later this week, Labour have published a draft bit of legislation which addresses the position of (most) renters where they fail to pay rent due to effects of...
Oh wouldn’t it be loverly?
All I want is a room somewhere Far away from the cold night air With one enormous chair Oh, wouldn't it be loverly? Finally, a delayed look at the JUSTICE 'Solving Housing Disputes' report, which they announced as 'bold and ambitious'. Alas, I...
Short lets and breach of lease
A couple of First Tier Tribunal decisions to add to the growing pile of findings that short let use is in breach of lease. City of Westminster v Madhukar Kothari LON/00BK/LBC/2019/0087 Mr Kothari had a right to buy lease of a City of Westminster...
District Heating and quantification of benefits
Strezovski and others v North Macedonia (App. Nos. 14460/16 and others) might not seem immediately relevant to readers. After all, housing law in North Macedonia is, I think we can safely say, quite different to England or Wales. But district...
Is a Section 8 notice on rent arrears a demand for rent?
I kindly been sent a couple of county court Circuit Judge decisions on the issue of whether section 8 notices (where the ground is rent arrears) have to comply with the requirements of section 47 Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 by the inclusion of the...
Oh! What a tangled web we weave…
Del Rio Sanchez v Simple Properties Management Limited. Central London County Court sitting at Oxford Combined Court. 24 February 2020 (Unreported elsewhere. Copy of judgment available here.) This is going to be quite long, I'm afraid, but this is...
Leasehold ASTs redux
Following on from yesterday's post by J on the CMA report (with its approach to the 'AST Trap') and from someone helpfully pointing out something that should have been completely obvious to me in the first place, I've re-written my old post on the...
Regulating Risk
Inclusion Housing Community Interest Company v Regulator of Social Housing [2020] EWHC 346 (Admin) I think this is the first judicial review of a regulatory decision by the Regulator of Social Housing and whilst, ultimately, the result is a fairly...
Residential Leasehold: The Competition and Markets Authority speaks
There are some major problems in the residential leasehold property market. They range from the simply inexcusable (e.g. the doubling ground rents that continue for the whole term of the lease), to the unintended legislative loophole (e.g. the long...
Timing is everything
When does the main housing duty under s. 193, Housing Act 1996 to provide suitable accommodation to 'successful' homeless applicants, who currently are in a property, take effect? Such a simple and important question; such tortured authorities,...