In the second post of County Court cases you will already have read in June's Legal Action Housing updates, we turn to unlawful eviction and harassment. And it appears to have been a rich few months in this regard, with no fewer than five cases to...
All the blog posts, most recent first
Re-entry and re-opening: updates from Legal Action
June's Legal Action housing updates have a bumper collection of interesting county court cases, as you'll already know. For our archives, this is the first of a couple of posts. This one deals with cases on post-eviction re-entry and on re-opening...
Pulling the Rugg out from under them
Housing Minister Grant Shapps has now confirmed that not only the National Landlord Register is finished as a proposal. Also dead in the water are regulation of letting and managing agents, and compulsory written tenancy agreements. Councils are...
Housing policy dribbles
Or the good, the bad and the ugly from the Housing minister and the Communities and Local Government secretary. Grant Shapps, housing minister has been setting out some plans, or perhaps aspirations. Mostly, these seem to involve encouraging people...
Care Home closure – not admissible to ECtHR
Louisa WATTS v the United Kingdom - 53586/09 [2010] ECHR 793 This was the admissibility hearing of a case brought by Yvonne Hossack on the closure of a care home by Wolverhampton BC and transfer of the residents to other care homes. Ms Watts was a...
Size doesn’t matter
Craftrule Ltd v 41-60 Albert Palace Mansions (Freehold) Ltd [2010] EWHC 1230 (Ch) is the first higher court decision on the meaning of "self-contained part of a building" in the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993. Qualifying...
Accommodating an abducted child
EA v GA & Westminster City Council & Salford City Council [2010] EWCA Civ 586 [Not on Bailii, transcript on Lawtel] This is a little outside our usual grounds, but as it concerns the Court's power to direct Local Authorities to accommodate a child...
No room for ravers
Oluić v Croatia (application no. 61260/08) is a decision of the First Section of the European Court of Human Rights demonstrating, if further evidence were needed, that Croatia, housing and article 8 just don’t get along all that well. Mrs Oluić...
Tenancy Deposits- A Novel Argument on Hold
Another County Court case on tenancy deposits with a couple of unusual arguments.
Less than ambulatory intentions
Kernott v Jones [2010] EWCA Civ 578 This was the Court of Appeal hearing, on a second appeal, of a case on equitable interests in a property. We reported the first appeal to the High Court and were uneasy about the outcome of that appeal, which...
An Interesting (but wholly normal) Trespass and Rights of Way Case in Northern Ireland*
The High Court of Northern Ireland has been considering the creation of an implied right of way in a wholly normal and innocent set of factual circumstances.
How binding is a s.125 notice?
Nessa v London Borough of Tower Hamlets [2010] EWCA Civ 559 This is an interesting appeal on the issue of the amendment or replacement of a S.125 Housing Act 1985 notice offering the right to buy at a specified price. The actual case itself is not...