I kindly been sent a couple of county court Circuit Judge decisions on the issue of whether section 8 notices (where the ground is rent arrears) have to comply with the requirements of section 47 Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 by the inclusion of the...
Oh! What a tangled web we weave…
Del Rio Sanchez v Simple Properties Management Limited. Central London County Court sitting at Oxford Combined Court. 24 February 2020 (Unreported elsewhere. Copy of judgment available here.) This is going to be quite long, I'm afraid, but this is such a...
Leasehold ASTs redux
Following on from yesterday's post by J on the CMA report (with its approach to the 'AST Trap') and from someone helpfully pointing out something that should have been completely obvious to me in the first place, I've re-written my old post on the leasehold...
Conceptualising damages for housing conditions – they don’t add up.
We don't often run 'think-pieces' (this may be too generous a description), at least not when unattached to new case law, but the ongoing transformation of 'disrepair' into 'housing conditions' claims has got me (and I know others who write here) thinking...
You know what I mean – Errors in section 8 notices
Pease v Carter & Anor (2020) EWCA Civ 175 Does an error in a section 8 notice - in this case specifically as to the earliest date on which possession proceedings can begin - invalidate the notice? At first instance in this case, the landlord had served a...
Amendments to Part 55
A statutory instrument - The Civil Procedure (Amendment) Rules 2020 - has been laid, and it includes, amongst other things, amendments to CPR Part 55 on possession claims. These will be in force from 6 April 2020. The explanatory memorandum says: Housing...
Deposit penalties – factors on culpability. Sort of.
Davies v Scott, 24 October 2019, Mayors & City County Court . HHJ Saggerson (Unreported, we've seen a note of judgment) This was a county court appeal on a failure to protect deposit claim. We saw the first instance decision on this case here. This was...
Rent Repayment Orders, criminal standard, and new evidence on appeal
Salva v Singh-Potiwal (HOUSING - HOUSE IN MULTIPLE OCCUPATION) [2019] UKUT 307 (LC) This was the appeal of a First Tier Tribunal decision on Ms Salva's application for a rent repayment order. Ms Salva has a tenancy of a room in a property owned by Mr...
Electrical safety checks – soon with added regulation
The draft of The Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector (England) Regulations 2020 has been laid in Parliament. The regs require a resolution of each house, so this will not be an immediate approval, but should be soon - it looks like the...
Tenancy deposit – unserved prescribed information
Liaw v Sohal. Central London County Court, 10 January 2019. (unreported elsewhere, we've seen the approved judgment). A county court first instance deposit claim decision, but with elements of interest and broader relevance (as well as some lessons to...
I wanna be your dog
I was listening to the Stooges this morning, drinking my tea and wondering if I could postpone those DIY tasks for just a little bit longer, when a Twitter post from Robert Jenrick MP (Sec of State for Housing) popped into view. The Minister proudly...
Improper purposes
First, a quick erratum to yesterday's post on upcoming housing law. The post had wrongly stated that the 1 June 2020 Tenant Fees Act changes would mean repaying deposits of over five weeks rent on pre 1 June 2019 tenancies. That is not the case, so long as...