The Claimant in R (on the application of Brooks) v LB Islington [2015] EWHC 2657 (Admin) was the mother of 3 children, who applied to the local authority as homeless following her eviction from a housing association property for rent arrears on 24/3/2015....
Right to reside – Carry on as before?
Following hard on the heels of J's excellent post on the Immigration Bill, we now have further discussion of the EU right to reside rules by the CJEU in Jobcenter Berlin Neukolln v Alimanovic Case C-67/14 (to which I might say, good luck landlords). To say...
Doesn’t it make you proud to be English?*
The Immigration Bill 2015 has been published and will have a Second Reading in the House of Commons on October 13, 2015. It contains some truly remarkable provisions about housing. But first, short re-cap to remind you how we got to this stage. The...
1 October 2015 – section 21 day
[Update 29/09/2015. New regulations correcting the obvious errors in the new prescribed section 21 notice have now been made. See here.] On 1 October 2015, a whole range of changes come in, which affect whether or not a landlord can serve a s.21 notice on an...
All of the wrong. And then some more.
Kazadi v Martin Brookes Lettings Estate Agents Limited & Faparusi, Edmonton County Court 14 May 2015 Thanks to Legal Action September 2015 Housing law updates for this one. An assured shorthold tenancy deposit and unlawful eviction case in which everyone...
The way you Mackie me feel*
The latest episode in the ongoing saga of the unlawful moneylender Dharam Prakash Gopee [or sometimes Ghopee] has just been handed down. (To catch up with the extraordinary history of the predatory, unlawful secured lending of Mr Gopee's many and various...
Of bad banks behaving badly and public bodies
An intriguing mortgage possession County Court case featuring a 'bad bank'. While the case itself turns on a failure by the bank to obtain relief from sanctions, it features an interesting line of argument that may well be raised again. NRAM plc v X [Name...
‘It did seem to be expensive’
Gateway (Leeds) Management Ltd v (1) Naghash (2) Shamsizadeh [2015] UKUT 333 (LC) If a head leaseholder, or managing company passes on as a service charge, rent charged by a freeholder for property in order to provide services, does this amount to a variable...
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...
Human Rights Update
Zammit & Attard Cassar v Malta [2015] ECHR 751 This is the latest in the sequence of cases dealing with rent controls and breaches of A1P1 (previous note here). The property in this instance was let under a commercial lease and in 2002, the applicants...
The Something Must Be Done Bill, Calais edition
The Rent Act 1957 introduced the requirement for a court order for eviction from a tenancy. That is 58 years of eviction without due process of law being unlawful. But no matter, for Something Must Be Done to deter people who have spent months on perilous...