…..a personal if informed rant! Our regular guest blogger Ben Reeve-Lewis gets on his soapbox. The Conservative / Lib Deb coalition housing benefit plans So the new coalition government is gradually putting a plan together and have turned their eyes on housing benefit reforms. They have made bold and popular statements that appeal to many…
This is day 10 of my 31 days of tips on tenancy agreements series. To see the rest of the series click here. Describing the property correctly in the tenancy agreement This sounds obvious but you need to be careful. If you get a court order for possession, you do not want the bailiffs to…
Two years ago I did a review of Roof Magazine on my Landlord Law site, where I said how good it was. I have just finished reading the January / February 2010 issue, and have decided I need to write about it again. It really is excellent, this issue in particular. For example articles I…
As mentioned in my last post, the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) has now published a report and consultation on housing benefit. The paper sets out the departments thinking on Local Housing Allowance (e.g. direct payment to landlords) and makes interesting reading. The report starts with a bit of self congratulatory backslapping, for example…
There have always been criticisms of the new Local Housing Allowance (LHA) scheme, for example see this report here I did in October 2007. Shelter have now issued further criticism of the scheme after surveying “more than 450 LHA claimants” (although perhaps not the most comprehensive survey – 1,000 would have been better). Their findings…
The Supreme Court decision in the OFT case against the banks has been handed down today, and to the surprise of many it is in favour of the banks rather than the OFT. This will also impact on the OFT v. Foxtons case, as I understand Foxtons were waiting for this decision to be published before deciding whether…
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Fast Trak to the rescue for social housing tenants
An interesting article in the January / February issue of Residential Property Investor looks at Fast Trak, a new company tackling the problems of too many social housing tenants, not enough social housing to put them in, and not enough private landlords willing to take a chance on them. There are a myriad reasons why…