A couple of new bedroom tax FTT decisions (also on the FTT decisions page) The first, from Liverpool [reasons here], is a fairly standard room size decision on a room measuring 44 square feet. However the room had a bunk bed in it, used by the...
All the blog posts, most recent first
Pregnancy and Worker Status
Saint Prix v SSWP Case C-507/12 must be one of the more obvious decisions of the CJEU in the sense that the outcome should have been apparent (although the rationale less so), but no less important because of that. The question on reference from...
What’s the Din?*
In Haile v Waltham Forest LBC [2014] EWCA Civ 792, the question for the Court of Appeal was the relevant date for determining whether an applicant is intentionally homeless. On the facts, this was a significant question: Ms Haile had left her room...
Ebooks! (Maybe)
I've been playing around with the idea of turning some of the NL archive into ebooks, so that they are available offline. In fact I've been playing around with ways of doing this. Unfortunately, after considerable installing and uninstalling,...
Come friendly bombs…
Terrorism insurance is an increasingly contentious issue in service charge cases; in short, many leaseholders think it is unnecessary and simply serves to increase the their service charges (and, potentially, acts as an additional source of...
Former landlords and s.20B LTA 1985
In Ground Rents (Regisport) Ltd v Dowlen [2014] UKUT 144 (LC), the Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) had to – once again – grapple with s.20B, Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. The facts are quite straightforward. Imagine, if you will, that there is a...
On the naughty step: The unacceptable face of London landlords
Some of you, those in London at least, might have noticed Boris Johnson announce a new, and completely voluntary, no compulsion here, landlord accreditation scheme. The idea being that tenants, desperate to find somewhere in the middle of the worst...
The state of that bedroom
This is a rather unusual bedroom tax First Tier Tribunal decision from Islington. (Decision notice. Also on the FTT decisions page.) There was one additional room, classed as a bedroom by the landlord, Islington Council. The tenant appealed on the...
Declining gracefully
In honour of our 8 year anniversary, and in the temporary absence of any interesting case law, I am considering commissioning a suitable bas-relief. The classicist in me fancies something like this: Because this is more or less exactly how I...
Formerly known as.
Here is an interesting FTT bedroom tax decision from Runcorn, received via RAISE who are clearly doing good work in supporting such appeals. The detailed statement of reasons is here (and on the FTT decisions page). The appellant is the tenant of...
What’s another year*
Astoundingly, the blog is now 8 years old. Apart from being generally glad that I'm still going, and that the blog is too, I'm genuinely not sure what I think about that. Put as bluntly as that, it seems like a long time. Still, here we are, some...
Götterdämmerung
Well, featuring fire and flood at least. As we've noted before, the '1996 exemption' to the bedroom tax only applied if one was in the same property or if: the dwelling so occupied was not the same by reason only that the change was caused by a...