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...
All the blog posts, most recent first
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...
Don’t ask the surveyor
Windermere Marina Village v Wild [2014] UKUT 163 (LC) is an important decision about the vexed question of apportionment that arises in many residential service charge disputes. Many residential leases for flats divide up the total service charge...
Succession and Sharia
A quick note on a recent Court of Appeal decision: Northumberland & Durham Property Trust Ltd v Ouaha. From 1/8/1980 until his death on 19/11/2010, Mr Al-Faisal held a protected Rent Act tenancy of Flat 15, 1 Royal Avenue House, London, SW3. In...
An obligatory discretion?
Rutherford & Ors v Secretary of State for Work And Pensions [2014] EWHC 1613 (Admin) This was the judicial review, supported by CPAG, of the failure of the bedroom tax regulations to address the position of tenants where a bedroom was needed...
How much is a secure tenancy worth?
London Borough of Lambeth v Loveridge [2013] EWCA Civ 494 We are appallingly late with this one, and have no excuse. But this case has just been given permission by the Supreme Court, so this is a good moment to make amends. Mr L was the secure...
An interim measure
Fisher v Howard De Walden Estate Ltd RAP/19/2013 is that rare thing - a citeable permission to appeal decision from the UT(LC) (remembering that in Re Bradmoss [2012] UKUT 3 (LC), the UT(LC) had disapproved of reliance on permission decisions, see...
The UKIP-ification of law
Or, why Nigel Farrage doesn't need to worry about that house-load of Romanians moving next door to him once the Immigration Act 2014 comes into force. The Immigration Act 2014 received Royal Assent on May 14, 2014 and, as is obviously the case for...
If you are seeing this…
If you are seeing this post, then the change to the new server has been successful. If you aren't, then it may take a little while to kick in....
Server shifting – a new home
I'm moving the blog over to a new server this weekend. With luck, you shouldn't notice anything at all, but just in case things go horribly wrong and you have problems accessing the site, it should all be done by Monday. Or I will be a...
This is what we always meant
Regular readers of this blog (when it is accessible) will know that we are a housing law blog. However, housing law (for the most part) is covered by the overarching umbrella of civil law and we do therefore occasionally cover the odd important...
Article 8 and night-time care
The ECtHR Chamber has delivered its decision in McDonald v UK. For the reasons given below, the Court has decided that there was no breach of Article 8 ECHR following the reduction in Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea’s care services package...