This is not exactly a housing law post, though the operation of housing law runs through it at an angle. It is more of a snapshot of the present reality of social and private housing, at least in London, traced through the history of a remarkable group of...
Technical hitch for Internet Explorer users
[Edit 23/09/14 - temporary fix - use the print button now added at the bottom of each post. This works safely.] Sorry to anyone already affected by this, but it appears that trying to print from this site in Internet Explorer to a laser printer causes the...
Bedroom tax bits
Here are couple of new First Tier Tribunal decisions (also on the FTT decisions page). A room use decision from St Helens - a room which had been used since the start of the tenancy as a dressing room/home office, and where a sewing machine was kept and...
Tribunals and Reviews and Appeals. Oh My!
I did a talk at a conference on the topic of legal issues about the bedroom tax, it was basically a critical overview of the higher courts and tribunal (FTT and UT) cases. In case they are useful or vaguely interesting, my notes are here. (No jokes though....
A Thursday stuffed with housing stuff
A busy Thursday for housing law, not yet law, housing benefits and housing misc. Item one. A Scottish Upper Tribunal is to hear a room size appeal on 18 September. This is one of the first Fife decisions. It is not the lead case in the English Upper...
Affordable Homes Bill & the bedroom tax
I haven't written about the Affordable Homes Bill, partly because time, and partly because I was deeply cynical about the Bill's prospects of getting anywhere pre-election, and the omissions it contained. (In fact for many of the same reasons contained in...
Ch ch ch ch changes
When is a Secure Tenancy Agreement not a Secure Tenancy Agreement? News has reached us of an interesting case in Bow County Court involving the right to succeed to a secure tenancy and the operation of s.103 of the Housing Act 1985: London Borough...
Landlord Immigration Checks from 1 December
The Home Office has (finally) announced the 'pilot' areas for the landlord immigration check requirement under Immigration Act 2014. The areas are Birmingham, Walsall, Sandwell, Dudley and Wolverhampton. The requirement will come in to force in those areas...
Bedroom tax and human rights: The UT has a go
I've got two Upper Tribunal decisions on bedroom tax appeals, both from Scotland. Both concern human rights related cases. One concerns what sounds like a fairly hopeless and sadly not well argued case based on disability. The other is considerably more...
A longer waiting to wait
Barnet Council are consulting on changes to their 2012 Allocation policy. The main change proposed is that the current 'residence requirement' of two years be increased to five years. That is to say that no-one would be eligible for Barnet's housing register...
Mortgage possession: Lloyds and the arrears that weren’t
From the High Court in Northern Ireland comes a significant joined case of a mortgage lender behaving badly. Bank of Scotland, and indeed possibly the whole Lloyds group seem to have acted in this way, for which they have received an extremely severe...
Eviction: “Sexual, athletic and squeaking noises”
In a case that recalls the 'unnatural' noises emanating from Concord, Tyne and Wear, a German Court was faced with a tricky decision in a claim for possession. The ground given was that the tenant had installed a 'very old' sex swing in 2012. And, despite a...