I haven't written about the Affordable Homes Bill, partly because time, and partly because I was deeply cynical about the Bill's prospects of getting anywhere pre-election, and the omissions it contained. (In fact for many of the same reasons contained in...
Cannot undertake to the FTT to patch up bad work
In Nogueira v Westminster the Upper Tribunal had to deal with a rather odd decision of the First Tier Tribunal (called the "F-tT" in the report - an orthography I shall avoid). To cut what must have been a long story short, the case was about major works to...
Ch ch ch ch changes
When is a Secure Tenancy Agreement not a Secure Tenancy Agreement? News has reached us of an interesting case in Bow County Court involving the right to succeed to a secure tenancy and the operation of s.103 of the Housing Act 1985: London Borough...
The public sector equality duty and priority need
We are (or more accurately I am) a bit late on this one. It is quite important though and the fact I have only just written it up should not detract from that. In Kanu v Southwark LBC [2014] EWCA Civ 1085, the Court of Appeal considered whether the public...
Hedonic regression and relativity
The question of the use of hedonic regression in the calculation of relativity is, I suspect, not breakfast table conversation for some of our readers even if it would appear that in the bars of Chelsea they talk of nothing else. The Upper Tribunal's...
Landlord Immigration Checks from 1 December
The Home Office has (finally) announced the 'pilot' areas for the landlord immigration check requirement under Immigration Act 2014. The areas are Birmingham, Walsall, Sandwell, Dudley and Wolverhampton. The requirement will come in to force in those areas...
Bedroom tax and human rights: The UT has a go
I've got two Upper Tribunal decisions on bedroom tax appeals, both from Scotland. Both concern human rights related cases. One concerns what sounds like a fairly hopeless and sadly not well argued case based on disability. The other is considerably more...
You’ve got absoutely nothing out of this
For most parties that enter into litigation (save for those on CFAs and some who are legally aided) a win isn't really a win unless the other side is also ordered to pay your costs. I say most, because certain litigants enter into litigation knowing that...
A longer waiting to wait
Barnet Council are consulting on changes to their 2012 Allocation policy. The main change proposed is that the current 'residence requirement' of two years be increased to five years. That is to say that no-one would be eligible for Barnet's housing register...
Mortgage possession: Lloyds and the arrears that weren’t
From the High Court in Northern Ireland comes a significant joined case of a mortgage lender behaving badly. Bank of Scotland, and indeed possibly the whole Lloyds group seem to have acted in this way, for which they have received an extremely severe...
Eviction: “Sexual, athletic and squeaking noises”
In a case that recalls the 'unnatural' noises emanating from Concord, Tyne and Wear, a German Court was faced with a tricky decision in a claim for possession. The ground given was that the tenant had installed a 'very old' sex swing in 2012. And, despite a...
Odds and Sods
A few bits and pieces, none of which are worth their own post, including a couple of updates on old 'friends'. First, as you have probably noticed, the blog has had a redesign (yes, another one). There are a couple of reasons for this: partly for a more...