Some quick notes. First, the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Bill finally has a Commons committee date! This is the next step after second reading. The committee is on 20 June 2018 and we have high hopes of getting the Bill and amendments through in one...
Late review decisions and homeless appeals
Muloko v Newham LBC, County Court at Central London 6 April 2018 This is from a note of the judgment in June 2018 Legal Action - Housing: Recent Developments. I usually wait a month or two on reporting cases from Legal Action, but I report it now as it has...
Damages for badly performed homeless duties?
Brief notes on a couple of cases, both, in different ways, approaching the issue of whether a homeless applicant can claim for damages arising from the bad performance of the local authority's statutory duties. McDonagh, R (on the application of) v London...
Too soon?
Our thanks to Sally Blackmore of Ely Place Chambers for her note of this deposit case, which unaccountably slipped past us at the time (a year ago). The issue is the effect of the landlord providing the prescribed information before a deposit has actually...
Forthcoming law (and informed consent)
The Tenant Fees Bill has had its second reading. The current Bill and its progress are here. There is a lot to digest in the Bill and I suspect there will be amendments on route. There are a whole new range of civil penalties, possible offences and...
Heavy handed, inaccurate threats of legal action – Metropolitan HT harass their tenants
Worthington & Anor v Metropolitan Housing Trust Ltd (2018) EWCA Civ 1125 The Court of Appeal on an instance of tenancy management going bad, very bad indeed. And the landlord losing a claim against them for damages for harassment under Protection from...
Court of Appeal on illegal eviction – quantum and heads of claim.
Smith v Khan (2018) EWCA Civ 1137 Well! It is not often that an illegal eviction case gets to the Court of Appeal, let alone on the tenant's appeal. But that is what we have here. There are some useful bits along the way, the correction of some errant views...
On the Naughty Step – ‘Accommodation Clubs’
To misquote Groucho Marx, you really don't want to belong to any such club that would have you as a member. I've been hearing about these set ups for a while. They seem to be the latest thing in bloody stupid 'get rich quick from residential property that...
Bits – tenant fees, airbnb and more
The Tenant Fees Bill is now underway. The first reading was on 2 May 2018. The Bill page is here. The Govt response to the CLG select committee report on the proposals is here. Notable in the the Bill is a proposed ban on serving a s.21 notice while an...
Automatic discharge of suspended possession order – it depends
Armstrong v Ashfield District Council (2018) EWCA Civ 873 Where a suspended possession order has provided for a future date of discharge, does that take effect even when the landlord has applied for a warrant on breach of terms in the interim and those...
On the Naughty Step – the questionable ethics of the Christian Legal Centre
Some people will not have come across the Christian Legal Centre (CLC) until the Alfie Evans case. Others will know something of their history. What the Alfie Evans case has done is cast light on what one might call the modus operandi of the CLC and some...
Councils behaving badly – Part whatever
With grateful thanks to Housing: Recent Developments in March 2018 Legal Action comes this report of a county court case for unlawful eviction. What makes it slightly unusual is that the perpetrator landlord was a council. Lutman v Ashford BC, County Court...