The latest episode in the ongoing saga of the unlawful moneylender Dharam Prakash Gopee [or sometimes Ghopee] has just been handed down. (To catch up with the extraordinary history of the predatory, unlawful secured lending of Mr Gopee's many and various...
Making sense of deposits. Nearly.
It started as such a simple idea, the tenancy deposit regulations. But bad drafting and some 'interesting' interpretations by the Courts put paid to that. We now have a confusing mess, for both landlords and tenants. So, in a spirit of helpfulness (and to...
Of bad banks behaving badly and public bodies
An intriguing mortgage possession County Court case featuring a 'bad bank'. While the case itself turns on a failure by the bank to obtain relief from sanctions, it features an interesting line of argument that may well be raised again. NRAM plc v X [Name...
Discrimination between death and divorce?
Samawi v Haringey LBC, Claim no: A01EC488, 3 July 2015 Central London County Court Thanks to an Arden Chambers eflash comes news of a County Court case with interesting potential repercussions, albeit probably some way down the line. Mr Samawi was in many...
‘It did seem to be expensive’
Gateway (Leeds) Management Ltd v (1) Naghash (2) Shamsizadeh [2015] UKUT 333 (LC) If a head leaseholder, or managing company passes on as a service charge, rent charged by a freeholder for property in order to provide services, does this amount to a variable...
Wherever I lay my hat… Residence tests for allocation policies
HA, R (On the Application Of) v London Borough of Ealing [2015] EWHC 2375 (Admin) This is, I think, a very significant case for all Councils who have or are considering setting residence requirements in their allocation policies. Like quite a few councils,...
New home
Apologies for any disruption you may have encountered in getting to the site over the last day. We have moved to a new server (again, courtesy of the lovely Tessa Shepperson of Landlordlaw, who very generously provides our hosting for free). The new server...
The Something Must Be Done Bill, Calais edition
The Rent Act 1957 introduced the requirement for a court order for eviction from a tenancy. That is 58 years of eviction without due process of law being unlawful. But no matter, for Something Must Be Done to deter people who have spent months on perilous...
Subjective suitability
Poshteh v Royal Borough of Kensington And Chelsea [2015] EWCA Civ 711 At issue in this second appeal from a s.204 appeal was whether it was reasonable for Ms Poshteh to have refused an offer of accommodation. Both parties agreed that the property was...
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 deposit...
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 Tyneside. In...
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 bodge). The...