The authors refer in their preface to the (much regretted by lawyers in this field) lost opportunity to reform and simplify the law, when the Law Commission’s Renting Homes Bill was not taken up.  I suspect that if it had become law, this book would be a slimmer volume.

Defending possession proceedings is a practical book which covers the three main types of possession claim – those brought by social landlords, private landlords and mortgage companies.  The authors (including a QC, a Judge and the Principal Solicitor of housing charity Shelter) are all specialist housing lawyers, and have between them enormous authority and experience.

Since the last edition was published in 2006 there have been considerable changes, discussed in the preface.  This has resulted in seven new chapters, on family intervention tenancies, replacement tenancies, public law defences, disability discrimination defences, rent arrears and bankruptcy, and Islamic home purchase, plus chapters on introductory and demoted tenancies.

The book remains, as it always has been, a practical guide for lawyers and other practitioners working in the housing law field.  It is regarded, justly, by many as the housing lawyers bible.  If you work in this area of law, you should waste no time in ordering the new edition, and it is a must for all law libraries.

Defending Possession Proceedings is published by Legal Action Group and can be purchased online from Amazon.

Housing Allocation and Homelessness: Law and Practice

This is the second edition of this book, written by Jan Luba QC and Liz Davies, both of Garden Court Chambers and both very well known to anyone in the sector.

The overall aim of the book, as the subtitle suggests, is to provide both a comprehensive view of the law in these areas, but also to provide the clear and practical information required by advisors and practitioners in dealing with individual cases. It generally succeeds in this admirably.

The first part deals with allocation policy and practice. This is a substantial and detailed address which starts with an outline history of the statute and government guidance governing local authority allocation policies and procedures, including the major amendments of the Housing
Act 1996 and the Homelessness Act 2002.

This is highly useful for anyone new to advising on allocations who is trying to make sense of the complex history of case law. An overview of the current position is followed by a detailed breakdown of eligibility, allocation schemes and the practicality of being allocated a property.

The latter chapter acknowledges the transformation in the legal landscape brought about by the House of Lords in R(Ahmad) v Newham LBC and the green light given for simplified banding in choice based schemes. The topic of ‘challenges to allocation schemes’ now occupies just two pages.

As well as dealing with nominations to Registered Social Landlords by Local Authorities, the book also has a separate section on lettings by RSLs and their duty to maintain a lettings policy, a useful inclusion given the potential for challenge by judicial review, following Weaver v L&Q.

Although a stop press dated 91 March 2010 at the start of the book records the Tenants Services Authority becoming the regulatory body for social housing, both RSL and Local Authority, events threaten to overtake this in short order, with the threatened demise of the TSA. This is unlikely to have an immediate effect on the relevant statutory requirements and guidance, however.

The second section deals with homelessness. Opening chapters on strategy and on homeless prevention policy and guidance set the broad context. The next chapters focus on the individual applicant and the local authority’s powers and duties, from making an application, through the initial inquiry and decision process, to the statutory checklist of being homeless, eligible, in priority need and not intentionally homeless familiar to any housing advisor.

The following chapters, logically organised, deal with interim accommodation, duties and powers to assist the homeless, suitability of accommodation, reviews and appeals of decisions (including judicial review), and other help with accommodation from Local Authorities outside Part VII Housing Act 1996.

These chapters are clearly set out, detailed and fully supported with reference to relevant case law, as one would expect. Case law is up to date to the end of February 2010, including Tomlinson v Birmingham City Council in the Supreme Court.

The organisation of the sub-sections throughout these ‘practical’ chapters is particularly helpful to an advisor trying to find their way through this most complex interaction of fact and law, with a clear breakdown into points and issues to consider.

A final chapter considers the contracting out of homeless and allocation functions by Local Authorities. This last chapter is interesting, given the increasing tendency of Councils to contract out homelessness functions and potentially of use to advisors, as very recent cases on ‘contracting out’ of review functions have shown. Full appendices with relevant statute, SIs and guidance complete the book.

Overall, this is a worthy competitor to the LAG Homelessness and Allocations. On allocation, this book is considerably more detailed, and I would recommend it to anyone trying to fathom the basis and requirements of allocation policies, although by the very nature of the statute the discussion is inevitably at a fairly general level.

On homelessness, I wouldn’t want to chose between the two, on the content. Each has its own style and approach and which they prefer is something for the readers to decide.

Giles Peaker, our reviewer, is an assistant solicitor in the Housing and Public Law team at solicitors Anthony Gold.

Housing Allocation and Homelessness: Law and Practice can be purchased online from Amazon (affiliate link).

Homelessness and Allocations. 8th Edition

This may not be a book of much use to private landlords, although a glance between its covers would rapidly disabuse some of their conviction that ‘the Council’ will automatically help tenants that they evict. But for housing lawyers, advisors and indeed some local authority homeless unit officers, the LAG Homelessness book has long been the bible. Even now that there is strong competition in the form of Jan Luba QC and Liz Davies’ ‘Housing Allocations and Homelessness’, a new edition of ‘Homelessness and Allocations’ is a significant publication.

Andrew Arden QC has been joined by a new team of co-authors, Emily Orme and Toby Vanhagan, and they have collectively taken the opportunity to rework the structure of the book as well as add and revise material. This works well. Homeless and allocation law has changed significantly over recent years and there is always a fresh wave of case law, an old structure will end up creaking under the weight of additions and not suited for new issues.

The 8th edition has fused the discussion of public law into the homeless and allocation sections, so that it is no longer a discrete chapter. Public law remedies have a significant track record in this area now, so there is no need for an independent section on the operation of public law. There is a completely revised chapter on immigration and homelessness and on immigration and allocation. The chapter on allocations now also considers allocation by other providers of social housing.

Case law has been updated throughout, including a last minute note on Tomlinson v Birmingham City Council [2010] UKSC 8, a Supreme Court decision on whether the housing duty under the Housing Act 1996 was a civil right for the purposes of the Human Rights Act 1998, which was only handed down in February 2010. In fact there are more than 80 new decisions of significance added to this edition, affecting both homelessness and allocation law. The supplementary and new statutory guidance on homelessness and allocations respectively has also been addressed and also included in the appendices.

The basic structure remains unchanged however, and rightly so. The chapters on homelessness provide a logical breakdown of the qualification criteria for a full housing duty to be owed by a local authority and do so in a manner that effectively sets out a checklist for anyone dealing with a homelessness application. A chapter on the decision making process and the review process follows, then a chapter on the discharge of duty by the local authority. There is a section on appeals of the review decision to the County Court, contained in a chapter on ‘Enforcement’ generally. This could perhaps have been better signposted as the next step after a review in the chapter on decision making.

The chapter on allocations is relatively brief and has, if anything become even briefer as a result of case law since 2006. But it has been significantly updated and reworked and is as clear a guide to the duties of a housing authority on allocation as could be hoped for.

There have been some very important changes since the 7th edition was published in 2006, in particular in regards to allocations, with the growth of choice based letting schemes and the impact of R (Ahmad) v Newham LBC [2009] UKHL 7. These, together with the opening up of public law challenges to what are now private registered providers of social housing, following R (Weaver) v London & Quadrant, are all addressed in the revised edition and this is done with the clarity and concern over the practical effect of the law that characterises the whole book.

The following chapter on enforcement contains practical and detailed advice on the procedures for challenging decisions, or a failure to make decisions, in homeless and allocation processes. It covers Judicial Review, appeals to the County Court and mentions the alternative of a maladministration claim to the Local Government Ombudsman.

The remaining chapters concern other statutory provisions that may be of use if a homelessness application fails and discuss requirements on the local authority to have a strategy and to provide advice. The appendices include relevant statute and guidance as at January 2010, very helpfully gathered together.

Although perhaps no longer the only bible on this subject, ‘Homelessness and Allocations’ has long been one of the vital books for any housing solicitor or advisor. The updates to the 8th edition ensure that it remains so.

******

Giles Peaker, our reviewer, is an assistant solicitor in the Housing and Public Law team at solicitors Anthony Gold. Homelessness and Allocations can be purchased online from Amazon (affiliate link).

This book is really intended for housing law practitioners, essentially those looking after landlords and tenants in the social housing sector – mostly local authority housing, and housing associations.

A big part of that area of law, is the whole issue of homelessness and when a local authority is obliged to provide housing for someone in its area (allocation). This is looked at in the first two chapters.

There is then a big chapter looking at other circumstances where housing may or may not be provided, including issues relating to immigration and asylum seekers, accommodation under the Mental Health Act, housing and community care assessments, and accommodation under the Children Act. This takes us up to about half way through the book.

The following section looks at hazardous and unhealthy housing, and includes local authorities powers under the Housing Act 2004 and the Housing Health and Safety Rating system. There are then sections on prosecutions under the Environmental Health Act, and on disrepair where the authors look at claims under the Defective Premises Act 1972, the Occupiers Liability Act, the Human Rights Act, and the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. This useful chapter ends with guidance on procedure (for example for getting injunctions), set off, and long leases, and a table on personal injury awards made under the Defective Premises Act.

Chapter 5 looks at anti social behaviour and the measures available to social landlords to control this, such as ASBOs, and includes a section on measures available to victims.

The final part of the book looks at possession proceedings, chapter 6 being a general chapter, chapter 7 looking at housing benefit and possession proceedings based on rent arrears, and chapter 8 looking at mortgage repossessions, followed by chapters on procedure and possession orders.

This is a well written and helpful book and will be enormously useful for all those working in social housing. It will also be helpful for those, such as myself, who practice more in the private sector, and I have already found matters of interest which I may well be writing about in the future. It can be purchased from Amazon for £49.95 (affiliate link).

The authors of the books are all practising barristers at Garden Court Chambers, and the book is aimed at a professional readership. This is reflected in the price, which many will think is a bit pricey. However notwithstanding this, it will be a valuable addition to the housing lawyers bookcase.

The Essential Guide to Flatsharing

This book is written by the owners of the popular SpareRoom.co.uk flatsharing web-site. It is addressed to ‘sharers,lodgers, and everyone renting out a room’, and is very much a companion book to their web site service. As the authors have been working in the field for such a long time (their London flatsharing site, intolondon.com having launched in 1999), they clearly know what they are talking about.

If you are looking to flat share or rent a room, particularly if you are looking for a place in London, this is an excellent book. It provides all (or nearly all) the information you need to have, in an accessible manner. There are also insets giving the personal experience of landlords and tenants, as well as the authors.

Helpful chapters include:

• Basic information
• Finding a flatshare
• A special chapter devoted to lodgers
• A chapter setting out the terminology (which will be particularly helpful for those from outside the UK)
• A chapter on financial matters
• And a chapter on contracts, rights and agreements

The book ends with a special section on London, and some useful resources and links (although they could have included Landlord Law).

The book emphasises staying safe (a most important topic with flat shares), and usefully has a very good section at the end on staying safe online and reducing the risk of fraud (a subject we have also touched on here, at at the Landlord Law Blog). Their rules are worth mentioning again here:

• Never use Western Union (as it is easy for fraudsters to run off with your money)
• Never rent a room with out seeing it first (tenants), or (landlords) to anyone you have not met personally
• Get receipts
• Don’t leave sensitive documents lying around if showing someone round a flat
• When visiting flats, take someone with you or let them know where you are going

The book can be purchased (of course!) via the spare room web-site, or on Amazon here (affiliate link).