Does the landlord's repairing duty under Section 11 Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 extend to damage by fire, flood or tempest? LB Hammersmith and Fulham v Carty is a County Court judgment reported on Hardwicke Chamber's site which raises some interesting...
Proportionality – between claim and hearing
Well, well. A successful proportionality defence on an introductory tenancy and one upheld on appeal. There is also some helpful confirmation about what can be considered in assessing proportionality. Southend-on-Sea Borough Council v Armour (2012) QBD...
Not round these parts
R(Carney) v Bolton-at-Home Limited [2012] EWHC 2553 (Admin) Did historic ASB by the daughter of a former evicted tenant allow the local authority to refuse to allow her accommodation in the same area? This was the issue in this judicial review of...
Lease variation in the LVT
2012 seems to be a bumper year for cases under s.37, Landlord and Tenant Act 1987. Having had (so far as I can tell) none in the previous 20-odd years, we've now had two. The first was covered by us here and the second has just been handed down by the Upper...
Where’s Wally?
The Where's Wally? books are surprisingly good fun. You spend hours pouring over a page (or pages) trying to find Wally as he hides in ever more obscure places. Reading Day v Hosebay Ltd; Howard de Walden v Lexgorge [2012] UKSC 41 did rather feel like a...
New Regulations 2 – Private Sector Suitability
The Government has today laid The Homelessness (Suitability of Accommodation) (England) Order 2012 SI 2012 No. 2601. It comes into force on 9 November 2012 This sets out the issues for determining suitability (or the lack thereof) of accommodation for...
New Regulations 1 – ‘Zambrano’ eligibility
In response to Zambrano (C-34/09) the Government has laid new regulations today, to come into force on 9 8 November 2012. The Allocation of Housing and Homelessness (Eligibility) (England) (Amendment) Regulations...
Let’s all move to … Wales
This is another one of our irregular posts on our theme of happenings in Wales; this time with an apology because it's all rather later than I had hoped and SO much is going on in Cardiff that they must be in a state of permanent combustion. Following on...
More on more on damages
Or Simmons v Castle round two Simmons v Castle [2012] EWCA Civ 1288 As you may know, the original Court of Appeal decision in Simmons v Castle on the 10% uplift in general damages (our report here) was revisited after representations by the ABI and APIL. I'm...
More on ECtHR, Article 8 and the Private Sector
Hot on the heels of Buckland v UK follows a further decision of the ECtHR: Pelipenko v Russia, which is likely to add further weight to the Article 8/private sector debate. The case is distinctive for the State's shocking mishandling of the litigation...
Get back in your box
There is, it is fair to say, a degree of inconsistency in the approach and practice of LVTs up and down the country. In particular, some LVT members seem to see it as part of their role to act as quasi-audit bodies, looking into all aspects of the landlord's...
Arrears, warrants and abuse of process
A report of a County Court mortgage possession case has reached us, in which the secured lender's behaviour resulted in a finding of abuse of process. The question was when (an if) an arrears payment had been received. Blemain Finance Ltd v Andrea Jayne...