I caught someone from the National Citizens Advice Bureau on BBC Breakfast this morning, commenting on a CAB report on the large number of people in private rented properties in bad condition who are promptly evicted if they complain or do anything about the...
Housing Duty – stating the obvious
For once, Birmingham was on the winning side of an entirely predictable Court of Appeal judgment on homelessness law. Omar -v- Birmingham City Council 2007. (7 June 2007. Times Report. Not yet freely available elsewhere) Birmingham had discharged duty to the...
Trouble with tenses
I'm drafting an application and order for the variation of a suspended possession order and revival of secure tenancy under s.85 Housing Act. If the application is successful, the resulting order will immediately cease to have effect because someone else...
EU citizens and social housing
Head of Legal had an interesting post in response to my post on Hodge's outburst (the ramifications of which rumble on, including the BNP noting gratefully that they win whether the ideas become policy or if they are not carried through. Unfortunately true....
What's mine is yours, unfortunately.
To everything there is a season and housing issues are no exception. While winter brings a flood of disrepair cases, Spring is the time for relationship breakdown. Whether involving partners or spouses, this brings its own housing problems, particularly...
Local housing for local people
Margaret Hodge has decided that this is a good time to say that too much Council housing is going to economic migrants at the expense of local residents. Allocation policies should be rethought to reward 'length of residence, citizenship and national...
Succession in secure tenancies – House of Lords
An eminently sensible House of Lords decision today in Birmingham CC -v- Walker [2007] UKHL 22, maintaining the sensible Court of Appeal decision ([2006] 1 WLR 2641). At issue was whether a transmission or change of a tenancy in one of the forms set out in...
Riverside Housing v White, House of Lords
The Court of Appeal judgment in Riverside suggested that if rent increases hadn't been levied pretty much exactly as per any provision in the tenancy agreement, those increases were invalid. Riverside had levied rent increases later than the date specified...
White v Knowsley – Court of Appeal Judgment
Given today and no surprises. The upshot is that assured tenants and secure tenants are in exactly the same position in regard to suspended possession orders and that s.9 Housing Act 1989 and s.82 Housing Act 1985 have the same effect despite the difference...
Small claims limits unchanged
As regular readers may recall, the limit for disrepair claims to fall into small claims was under review. Proposals were made to raise the current limit of £1000 to £5000. Regular readers will recall that I thought that this was a Bad Thing. According to the...
More on London & Quadrant v Ansell
Musing over the Court of Appeal judgment ([2007] EWCA Civ 236) today, it struck me that the case does something rather dramatic to the issue of tolerated trespassers, extending the thrust of Swindon v Aston [2003] HLR 610. What we knew from Swindon v Aston...
Permanent trespassers and enforceable possession orders.
I was scanning the Court of Appeal judgments, waiting for White v Knowsley, when this came up: London & Quadrant Housing Trust v Ansell [2007] EWCA Civ 326 Now that is interesting. Not so much for the conclusion - although the argument is imaginative -...