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...
Odds and Sods
A few bits and pieces, none of which are worth their own post, including a couple of updates on old 'friends'. First, as you have probably noticed, the blog has had a redesign (yes, another one). There are a couple of reasons for this: partly for a more...
Bedroom tax and human rights FTT miscellany
No less than four FTT bedroom tax appeal decision have come my way lately. Three of them concern successful appeals on human rights Article 14 discrimination or Article 8 family life grounds. One is a clear room size decision with an interesting footnote on...