In a long awaited decision the High Court has held in Office of Fair Trading v Foxtons [2009] EWHC 1691 (Ch) that some of the terms and conditions contained in Foxtons' contract with landlords were unfair. While strictly speaking this decision is unrelated...
Tenancy Deposit – variations on a theme
Legal Action May 09 housing updates contain a few tenancy deposit cases, which further muddy the waters... Seghier v Rollings, Bow County Court, 6 March 2009. An assured shorthold beginning in May 2007. A deposit was paid by Mr Seghier to the letting agent...
Unlawful Eviction and Harassment quantum
The May edition of Legal Action's housing updates contains a report on Khan v Iqbal, Bury County Court, 13 March 2009. Ms Khan was an assured shorthold tenant on rent of £650 pm. She lived with her children aged 15 and 12 She got into rent arrears. The...
Regulating renting proposals
I'm just in the process of marking what feels like thousands of coursework essays on proprietary estoppel and constructive trusts. The thing that gets me - time for a rant - is that my very clever three As students can't actually write a proper sentence,...
Emergency remedial action
In Luton Borough Council v Universal Group we have the first (and almost certainly last) decision of the Lands Tribunal under the Housing Act 2004 on appeal from a Residential Property Tribunal (or RPT). 15-17 Chapel Street, Luton is (or was) consisted of a...
Green Paper "within 10 days"
It's the little things in life which get me excited and, as a bit of a policy nerd on the side, it looks like a Green Paper is to be expected within 10 days if The Times is to be believed. I'd heard on the grapevine that the GP had been canned because they...
Tenancy Deposit – it gets worse
Hat tip to Tessa at Landlord Law for this. There are reports on various tenant/landlord forums of tenants losing Housing Act 2004 claims for 3x deposit on unprotected deposit/lack of notification cases where the landlord has returned the deposit to the...
Tenancy Deposit on 'Renewal of Tenancy'
Our grateful thanks to the Painsmith blog again for news of another Tenancy Deposit case (and for giving me something to write about in these case bereft times). This is a County Court case on the issue of 'renewal' of a tenancy that started before April...
Letting agents hit by TDS?
A recent blog post on the PainSmith blog illustrates a potentially nasty trap for letting agents (and useful alternative target for tenants) in the tenancy deposit protection system of the Housing Act 2004. According to PainSmith a let-only agent received a...
It's not a deposit, honest
With thanks to Christopher Stockdale at John Barkers of Grimsby, we have had news of another Shorthold Assured Tenancy deposit case, Piggott v Slaven, Great Grimsby County Court 23 February 2009. This one is of particular interest as the issue at stake was...
Not another review …
Yes, it's true, another review has been published, this time of the regulation and redress in the UK housing market. And yes, if you're wondering, this was what the Law Commission did in their Issues paper on proportionate dispute resolution and further...
Deposits – the mandatory award again
As noted by Tessa at Landlord Law, the current (January 09) Legal Action housing updates includes a tenancy deposit case which further muddies the waters. Ferguson v Jones, Birmingham County Court 5 Nov 2008 concerned an assured shorthold tenancy. Ms Jones...