As ever, a number of NL people will be at the HLPA conference, simply the best housing law conference going. So, for anyone who hasn't seen the details, here they are, and hope to see you there. Housing Law Conference 2014 10 December 2014 The Royal...
Possession Archives
The extremely slow work of adding downloadable, searchable PDFs of the NL archives continues. In addition to the homelessness archives, there are now PDFs of the possession case posts from 2006 to date on the PDF Archive page. As before, these are unedited,...
A return of sanity: Allocation and reasonable preference
Jakimaviciute, R (On the Application Of) v Hammersmith And Fulham London Borough Council [2014] EWCA Civ 1438 Eligibility for allocation list, reasonable preference and homelessness. After a run of Court of Appeal housing decisions that might be mildly...
Only connect – allocation priority
Just a brief note, partly about Barnet's Allocation policy and partly about the surprising way that things can develop from a blog post. In September 2014, I noted that Barnet's proposed changes to its allocation policy had the effect of excluding domestic...
Separated families and bedroom tax
Cotton & Ors, R (on the Application of) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions & Ors [2014] EWHC 3437 (Admin) This was the Liberty backed judicial review of the bedroom tax regulations on the basis that the regulations amounted to an article 8...
A very unlawful eviction
(Finally) AA v London Borough of Southwark [2014] EWHC 500 (QB) This High Court judgment is remarkable in many ways, most of them worrying. It was the result of a six day hearing, with Southwark putting Kelvin Rutledge QC up against Mr AA in person and ended...
Christopher Chope MP makes a generous offer
The Justice Select Committee heard oral evidence on housing legal aid after LASPO today, 21 October 2014. Representatives from HLPA, Shelter and Garden Court Chambers gave evidence. The recording is here, if the video below doesn't work. In the course of...
Etcetera.
A few bits. There are four new FTT bedroom tax decisions on the FTT page, including one from Manchester where subsidence was classed as a 'natural catastrophe' for the purposes of continuity of property for the 1996 exemption. There are two room size and use...
Should auld acquaintance…
In which we revisit a couple of old friends. Mr Gopee of Barons Finance (and many other companies) continues to fare poorly in the RCJ. He apparently sought permission to appeal a couple of orders by HHJ Mackie QC, granting permission to appeal out of time...
Bedroom Tax: Upper Tribunal on Article 14
Following my plaintive cry here, I now have copies of the two Upper Tribunal judgments from Scotland referred to by the DWP. And, while the judgments do do something rather more and rather different to the outcomes suggested in the DWP Circular, sadly, what...
Downloadable archives
Having previously suggested the possibility of Ebook versions of our archives, I have been technologically frustrated in bringing this about (in the sense that it is probably do-able but would take up a large amount of my time and an investment in software...
Not enough information: Bedroom tax and disability discrimination
[Update 6/10/14 - got the judgments now. Detailed comment here] This is frustrating! A DWP circular HB U4/2014 contains an annex with notes on four Scottish Upper Tribunal bedroom tax decisions. Two of them I have already addressed here, but the first and...