In what has turned into a continuing series, there are further updates on enforcement of possession orders via the High Court, obtaining writs and the scandalous conduct of many High Court Enforcement Officers. (Previous posts here and here) Secretary of...
Bedroom tax updates
Assorted bedroom tax related items, while we wait for the Supreme Court to hear MA & Ors... In case number CH_2391_2015, the Upper Tribunal has ruled that an annual re-rating of housing benefit entitlement is a fresh decision each time, capable of being...
Ealing Comedy
R (on the application of A) v Ealing London Borough Council (2015) QBD (Admin) (Patterson J) 16/12/2015 (Not on Bailii yet, note on lawtel) Back in August, Ealing's allocation policy was found to be unlawful in HA, R (On the Application Of) v London Borough...
Disrepair miscellany: Good, bad and ugly.
Perhaps illustrating the need for the Court of Appeal to deliver the judgment in Moorjani (see preceding post), the December 2015 issue of Legal Action has Beatrice Prevatt's excellent annual 'housing repairs update'. We have covered many of the cases...
The law of unintended consequences (or, why everyone needs a housing lawyer)
As you might have noticed, the Housing and Planning Bill had its last day in Committee today in the House of Commons. It was the 15th and 16th (penultimate and final, respectively) sessions. Surely, you might think, this would be the fag-end of the Bill....
Eviction and High Court Enforcement
A couple of recent cases have highlighted the issues involved in transferring County Court possession orders to the High Court for enforcement by High Court Enforcement Officers. This is done by landlords, by and large, to bypass the wait for a county court...
Cities behaving badly and other bits
A remarkable note on the Community Law Partnership site sets out what may possibly amount to a mass unlawful eviction of secure tenants by Birmingham City Council. Birmingham CC have been using High Court Sheriffs for evicting secure tenants after a...
Bedroom tax and landlord’s bedroom count – UT again
The Upper Tribunal (Administrative Appeals) seems to have taken an opportunity to re-state, in clear terms, one of the findings of SSWP v David Nelson and Fife Council [2014] UKUT 0525 (AAC) [Our report here]. The key issue was the extent to which the...
Discrimination between death and divorce?
Samawi v Haringey LBC, Claim no: A01EC488, 3 July 2015 Central London County Court Thanks to an Arden Chambers eflash comes news of a County Court case with interesting potential repercussions, albeit probably some way down the line. Mr Samawi was in many...
Wherever I lay my hat… Residence tests for allocation policies
HA, R (On the Application Of) v London Borough of Ealing [2015] EWHC 2375 (Admin) This is, I think, a very significant case for all Councils who have or are considering setting residence requirements in their allocation policies. Like quite a few councils,...
IT wasn’t
In Wandsworth LBC v Tompkins [2015] EWCA Civ 846, Wandsworth had purported to grant Mr and Mrs Tompkins an introductory tenancy of a property; only, as the Court of Appeal found, it wasn't an IT because it couldn't be. Mr and Mrs Tompkins had made a...
Bedroom Tax and separated families – UT again
The Upper Tribunal has another go at the separated families issue in CH 0062 2015-00 and this time, unsurprisingly, shuts down completely the FTT dissenting position in a Middlesborough FTT decision, while upholding and amplifying MR v North Tyneside. In...