Housing associations, in particular Riverside Housing Association, will have been popping champagne corks recently, to celebrate the result of the recent House of Lords decision in the case of Riverside Housing Association v. White. In this case Mr and Mrs White, who were being evicted by their landlords, Riverside, sought to claim that they were…
There is an interesting report in the Times on a case, Williams v Richmond Court (Swansea) Ltd (heard on 14 December 2006), on disability discrimination. The landlord was appealing against the Judge’s finding against him at first instance that he discriminated against 81 year old tenant Mrs Williams who had requested he install a stair…
For a long time housing law has been bedeviled by a concept known as ‘the tolerated trespasser’ which occurs when a tenant who has had a suspended possession order made against him, breaches the terms of the order but is allowed to stay in occupation. A suspended possession order is where a possession order is…
We have recently had a fairly sensible case on section 21 notices, where the Court of Appeal has squashed an attempt by a tenant to wriggle out of getting evicted by claiming that the notice was defective. This was a situation where the fixed term of the tenancy had expired and the landlord was having…
You can’t keep a devious tenant down. I read in one of my legal journals of a tenant who issued legal proceedings against his landlord and gave as the landlord address for service of the court paperwork, the building where his own flat was. When the landlord failed to respond to the proceedings (because, surprise…
I always say that you should only ever apply for a possession order if you have a mandatory ground, but it is only when you see what can happen if you don’t, that you realise how very important it is. What do I mean? When you go to court for a possession order, your claim…
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Pigeon problems
In some towns pigeons are such a problem that feeding them is punishable by eviction from your home! So says this report from the Norwich Evening News. ASBOs are also threatened against those anti-social tenants who persist in feeding the birds. Indeed apparently in Bristol, 63-year-old Graham Branfield was given an indefinite anti social behaviour…