A recent blog post on the PainSmith blog illustrates a potentially nasty trap for letting agents (and useful alternative target for tenants) in the tenancy deposit protection system of the Housing Act 2004. According to PainSmith a let-only agent received a...
Unreasonable refusal to assign
A case appearing on my radar, though one that may not excite many readers is Landlord Protect Limited v St Anselm Development Company Limited [2009] EWCA Civ 99. A case concerning whether a landlord has imposed an unreasonable condition for a consent to...
The Gas Man Cometh
The case of Ferguson v British Gas [2009] EWCA Civ 46 concerns a complaint that British Gas harassed a former customer for some 6 months after she had transferred her gas supply to nPower. Although it is not a housing case, the report contains some useful...
Family Intervention Tenancies
From 5th January 2009 — in England at least — we will all be faced with a new beast the "Family Intervention Tenancy", previously alluded to by my colleague J. Since the last significant piece of the legal jigsaw was completed when the rules for local...
Accepting "part" of a cheque without waiving forfeiture
Osibanjo v Seahive Investments Limited [2008] EWCA Civ 1282 (Court of Appeal) Are there circumstances in which a landlord can accept only part of a cheque offered by a tenant and thereby avoid waiving its right to forfeit? It would appear that there are,...
Stadium Housing to Appeal
Regular readers of this blog will have read our comments on (in our view) a fairly poor example of service charge management by an RSL, entitled On the Naughty Step. To my surprise the RSL in question — Stadium Housing — have decided to appeal the decision....
Hey! That's my window.
Sheffield City Council v Hazel St Clare Oliver LRX/146/2007 [links to PDF] This is a case which touches on an issue familiar to those involved with right to buy leases: replacement of windows by the landlord. The landlord council wished to replace metal...