Housing Law blog
Thanks to our Housing Law contributors
I’d like to extend publicly a long overdue thanks to the contributors who have helped establish the initial authored Housing Law content on FreeLegalWeb:
- To the pseudonymous Nearly Legal for helping develop the authoring system and to him and his team for providing a steady stream of case notes and articles selected from Nearly Legal. The authoring team are NL himself, Chief, Dave, David Smith, J and Francis Davey. Francis was also a key player in the gestation of FreeLegalWeb.
- To William Flack for his help developing FreeLegalWeb and for providing a number of introductory guides – which he is now developing on his Social Welfare Law Wiki.
- To Tessa Shepperson for providing a selection of excellent articles, case notes and reviews from her Landlord-Law Blog.
- To Stephen Moore of CaseCheck for generously making available for our publication the entire CaseCheck case summaries archive (only the property and landlord and tenant categories are currently used).
- To Jamal Demachkie for providing materials from the Housing Law website.
We are also establishing a channel from the PainSmith Landlord and Tenant Blog (thanks to David Smith).
Housing Law is the focus of our Pilot site, but we welcome contributions from across all areas of law. If you write about the law, please share your expertise on FreeLegalWeb.
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The Advance Payment Scan – another internet scam to watch out for
We have written on the Landlord Law Blog about scammers before. Ben Reeve has kindly drawn my attention to this article on the BBC web-site which warns of yet another internet scam, the “advance fee fraud”.
This is where you are asked to wire money to a friend or relative to prove that you can pay the rent, and provide details to prove that you have done this. The scammer then collects the money and disappears.
Michael Banks, of Scamwarners.com told the BBC
“You think it’s secure, you’re making that payment to your relative, then you send him the details of it so he can check you’re of financial standing.
Unfortunately you don’t see your money again, it’s been collected and it’s not your brother that’s collected it.”
Scammers often post false property details on quite reputable web-sites (who do their best to stop them, but you can’t catch everyone). So be wary, and very suspicious if anyone asks you to wire money to a relative as proof of payment.
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Notorious Norwich landlord may go to jail after tenant suffers 80% burns
Those of us living in Norwich who work in property, all know about Mr Mike Billings. He is one of the biggest landlords in Norwich, letting mainly to the lower end of the market, with properties of variable standards of repair and safety.
I once lived in a Billings flat myself, when I first came to Norwich. I was lucky, my flat (or large room really) was reasonably good and I had no trouble. I heard complaints from others in the building though who were less fortunate.
Over the years Mr Billings has had many ups and downs. In the early 1990’s he nearly went bust and was only able to continue with the assistance of an insolvency expert. There have been numerous prosecutions and court actions. The Norwich Evening News lists the following in their articles:
- In 1997 Norwich City Council tried (unsuccessfully) to close down some controversial bed and breakfast accommodation
- In 1994 he was fined £3,300 for wedging open fire doors in one of his hotels
- In 1997 he was fined £400 for not servicing a gas water heater
- In 1998 he was fined £6,000 for flouting gas appliance guidelines
- In 2002 one of his tenants returned home to find his possessions piled up outside with a notice saying ‘everything free’
- Failed to take general fire precautions
- Failed to ensure that the premises were fitted with the appropriate fire fighting equipment, detectors and alarms
- Failed to comply with the requirement that flats could be evacuated quickly and safely, and
- Flouted gas appliance guidelines, putting his tenants at risk
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