Archive for December 2010
There’s no place like HMO
A brief trip to the Emerald City, or rather Reading, where the Borough Council may have established a record for a fine for breaches of The Management of Houses in Multiple Occupation (England) Regulations 2006 and the Housing Act 2004 Section 11. An HMO at 33 London Road was found by Reading BC to be [...]
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Defamation again: Mrs Clift wins in the Court of Appeal
Last year I blogged about Mrs Clift winning a claim for defamation against Slough Borough Council. The facts are in the earlier post. Slough’s appeal was rejected by the Court of Appeal in Clift v Slough Borough Council [2010] EWCA Civ 1171. While the point in issue was whether Slough could rely on a defence [...]
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How to evict your tenant on a shoestring budget
The problem – how to evict your tenant You have decided you need to evict your tenant. But you don’t have a lot of money to pay solicitors fees. Maybe your tenant is failing to pay rent and this is making life difficult for you. Once you get your property back you know you can…
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Criminal law and civil law explained – they are not the same
Two kinds of law It is not always appreciated by non lawyers that there are two kinds of law. Civil law and Criminal law. Civil law – is a complicated system which tries to set out rules to cover all the sorts of situation that may arise in life, and provides for disputes to be…
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Case Comment: Her Majesty’s Revenue And Customs v DCC Holdings (UK) Limited [2010] UKSC 58
In the case of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs v DCC Holdings (UK) Limited [2010] UKSC 58 the Supreme Court were asked to consider the effect of a complicated tax avoidance scheme designed to create a loss for tax purposes for the taxpayer wit…
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Case Comment: Manchester City Council v Pinnock & Ors [2010] UKSC 45
Having grappled (in its former guise as the House of Lords) for some years with the extent to which the European Convention on Human Rights, art 8, provides a defence to possession proceedings in circumstances where the court is mandated, under domesti…
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Rent claims in eviction proceedings
If you are evicting your tenant for unpaid rent – is it worth bothering about trying to collect the rent arrears? When I am instructed by landlords in eviction proceedings, they often find it difficult to comprehend that their rent may never be paid. But the reality is, that in the vast majority of cases,…
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Adverse Possession: Articles 1, 6 and freedom of speech?
Agnes Ofulue v the United Kingdom Application no. 52512/09 ECtHR This admissibility hearing was the culmination of a long, long story. We reported the Court of Appeal judgment and the House of Lords judgments. The very abbreviated history was that in 2005, the Ofulues had lost a possession claim for a property on the basis [...]
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Drying Flooded Buildings
The DCLG has published an interesting summary of guidance on dealing with flooded properties which may well prove valuable in the face of global warming and the uncertain climate!
This is not formal advice in itself so much as a signpost to the various…
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Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics
The DCLG has published the Housing and Planning Statistics for 2010. It has also released projections for housing need through to 2033.
To be fair they are pretty dull. The overall amount of stock available has continued the decline shown over the las…
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