The Ministry of Justice response to the 'Legal Aid: Refocusing on Priority Cases' consultation is now out, with the MoJ's final proposals [link to pdf]. Although the responses to the consultation appear to have been pretty universally negative, the MoJ is...
Advice and assistance
R(Savage) v LB Hillingdon [2009] EWHC Admin 88 [not on Bailii yet, available on Lawtel]. Ms S applied to Hillingdon Council as homeless following a possession order on her private rented accommodation on grounds of rent areas. Hillingdon provided temporary...
John Healy saves the world*
*Not really. The current housing minister, who holds the current record for the number of times a housing minister's name can be mentioned in a press release, has announced forthcoming legislation, in response to the Rugg report. More details here [link to...
Tenancy Deposit – renewal of tenancy again
Bihari v House Trader (UK ) Limited. 14 January 2010, Central London County Court While we wait for the forthcoming High Court and Court of Appeal decisions in tenancy deposit cases, here is a tenancy deposit appeal, but, alas, only to a Circuit Judge, so...
Condensed Condensation
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...
Gatekeeping and an absence of records
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...
Legal Action – Guest Post by Jan Luba and Nic Madge
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......
New server – all done
The transition hopefully appeared to be seamless, although there was a certain (considerable) amount of behind the scenes swearing. We are now on a larger and probably faster server. Our very grateful thanks to Tessa Shepperson of the landlord law blog who...
Moving Home
We're changing servers over the next few days. Hopefully you won't see too much disruption, but there is always the chance things might go horribly wrong. So if the site vanishes, don't panic, it should be back in about 3 or 4 days. Email may be iffy too....
Catching up with LAG
The January 2010 Housing updates in Legal Action have some County Court case reports that hadn't reached us. You will naturally have already read them in Legal Action, but for our archives... Tenancy Deposits O'Brien v Hill Barnet County Court 22/09/2009 Mr...
Jackson: the waiting begins
'What!' I hear you say, 'wasn't the final Jackson report on costs released on 14 January?' Why yes it was. All 584 pages of it. But amid the headlines about scrapping CFA success fees and recoverable ATE insurance premiums, introducing contingency fees, and...
On the Naughty Step
And what a thoroughly deserving new entrant to the roll we have in Anthony Carroll, apparently known as 'Uncle Tony', although 'Uncle' to whom and whether any Godfather style references were intended is not at all clear. Mr Carroll is a Nottingham based...