Three items relating to PRS licensing/HMO regulations and property management enforcement, with some added harassment of tenants thrown in. Thanks to Dean Underwood at Cornerstone for news of this Magistrates Court case. London Borough of Waltham Forest v...
You don’t know what you’re doing
January 5, 2016, sees the Housing and Planning Bill return to the House of Commons for the Report stage (if you want to read about how the Committee stage went, the excellent House of Commons library analysis is here and our comments are here). Now, as...
Bedroom farce
Mr Jones: [...] We want housing association landlords and tenants to reap the benefits from shorter-term tenancies as well. However, we clearly need to consider any changes to housing associations in the light of the recent decision of the Office for...
Look inside Westminster
In which the Nearly Legal team gain exclusive access to a (highly) fictionalised account of one man’s inside view of legislation currently going through Parliament, insofar as it relates to housing *** Morley Peckwitch, Member of Parliament for...
Right to Rent – just how bad is it?
We though it would be bad. And thanks to the JCWI, we can now have an evidence based stab at an answer. JCWI co-ordinated an evaluation of the West Midlands pilot of 'Right to Rent' and have published the report (summary here, and full report here). Notably,...
Housing and immigration. Bombshells and bombast
In a speech timed to hide the release of the latest figures on net migration, the Prime Minister made an assortment of announcements on forthcoming policies. The part that concern us here, went as follows: There are other ways we can identify those who...
HMO corner.
A couple of recent Upper Tribunal (Land Chamber) decisions on HMOs under licensing schemes. Urban Lettings (London) Ltd v London Borough Of Haringey [2015] UKUT 104 (LC) What does an 'appropriate person' 'having control of a HMO' mean in circumstances where...
Selective Licensing Reforms
If the case-law is to be believed, local authorities have a hard enough time introducing selective licensing schemes as it is (see R (Peat) v Hyndburn and R (Regas) v Enfield)). Well, the government has published a draft SI designed to make it even harder....
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10
This was a judicial review of LB Enfield's plans for borough wide additional HMO licensing and selective licensing of all PRS properties. It did not go well for Enfield, who appear to have not quite grasped the consultation requirements. Regas, R (On the...
When is a storey not a storey?
The answer appears to be when it is only for access! Bristol City Council v Digs (Bristol) Ltd [2014] EWHC 869 (Admin) We first reported on this case briefly as a decision of the Bristol Magistrates Court. It has now been appealed by way of case stated and...
Minimum Space (standards)
This is a post by Alan Richards, a journalist and blogger on legal matters, financial affairs, politics and economics, who blogs at Alrich. We are happy to add it to the blog, dealing as it does with size standards for housing, both social and private....
Confederacy of Dunces.
I've been watching the slow motion catastrophe that is 'Rent 2 Rent' [sic] for a while, as have other NL writers. Despite the high profile collapse of the poster boy and cheerleader, Unidaplace, last autumn, owing many thousands (and the simultaneous...