Although it is a commercial property case, Freifeld v West Kensington Court Ltd [2015] EWCA Civ 806, is of interest and relevance to residential landlord and tenant law as well, as the Court of Appeal grapple with the approach to be taken to...
All the blog posts, most recent first
S.21 and return of deposit.
Via Jonathan Starr of Switalskis Solicitors comes this account of a PRS possession/deposit case. The account is by Mr Starr, slightly edited. Although only a county court case, so non-binding, there are some interesting points about the return of...
Bedroom Tax and separated families – UT again
The Upper Tribunal has another go at the separated families issue in CH 0062 2015-00 and this time, unsurprisingly, shuts down completely the FTT dissenting position in a Middlesborough FTT decision, while upholding and amplifying MR v North...
Legal Aid Merits Test
With thanks to James Stark at Garden Court North for alerting me to this. From Monday (27.7.15) there is an important amendment to the Legal Aid merits test in S.I. 2015/1571. In short, "borderline" and "poor" cases are back in scope if it is...
TLATA: The Court’s discretion
In Bagum v Hafiz and Hai [2015] EWCA Civ 801, the Court of Appeal considered, apparently for the first time, the extent of its discretion under section 14, Trusts of Land and Appointment of Trustees Act 1996 ("TLATA"). The case is a sad and...
Primary considerations
In Mohamoud v RB Kensington and Chelsea and Saleem v Wandsworth LBC [2015] EWCA Civ 780, the Court of Appeal were faced with the difficult argument about the interaction between section 11, Children Act 2004 and possession proceedings brought by a...
CA to hear bedroom tax appeals this year
The CA is to hear bedroom tax appeals in A (the DV sanctuary appeal - our note here) and SR (where a minor requires overnight care - our note here) next term. A had been stayed pending the UKSC appeal in MA. However, Underhill LJ and Sir Stanley...
Normal service may be interrupted.
I (that being NL) am off on holiday for a couple of weeks. As I'm not the only one doing posts, there may well be posts during that time. But I am the only one who knows how the sending of updating emails works (and it is currently a bit of a...
The homelessness budget
After several days of a mixture of swearing and incredulity, I am finally ready to write about the 'emergency' budget (the emergency apparently being the pressing need to raise inheritance tax thresholds). For housing, the budget will have a...
How late it was, how late
Khuja v Chowdhury [2015] EW Misc B18 (CC) A County Court deposit protection case, and an illustration of some of the ways in which landlords still haven't figured out how the deposit rules work. Ms C was the assured shorthold tenant of Mr K,...
Party like it’s 1957
1957 was an important year. Russell Endean became the first man to be out "handled the ball" in a Test Cricket match. Anthony Eden resigned and Harold Macmillan became PM. The Cat in the Hat was first published. And it was the last time that anyone...
Westminster again…
In R(Alemi) v Westminster CC [2015] EWHC 1765 (Admin), which has been widely reported already (eg here; and all over my twitter feed), HHJ Blair QC found that Westminster's allocation scheme was unlawful in disbarring successful homeless applicants...