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 [...]
Tag Archive: social housing
Housing Law Handbook, a practical guide – by Stephen Cottle and others
It is not often realised by those outside the profession, that the Law Society produce some excellent handbooks on all sorts of legal topics. This book is a good example.
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, [...]
Homeless hostel too comfortable says VAT man
Reading the recent issue of Roof Magazine, I came across this utterly bonkers decision by the VAT authorities.
Byker Housing Association has built a new 31 bed hostel for the homeless in Newcastle – however the VAT authorities have deemed it to be a commercial building (i.e. a hotel) rather than a residential one – because [...]
In two minds about Malcolm
Speaking to a solicitor friend of mine recently who does housing association repossession work, she said bitterly that it seemed to be impossible nowadays to evict tenants who have any sort of disability. She is not going to be pleased with the recent Court of Appeal decision in London Borough of Lewisham -v- Malcolm.
Mr [...]
A green paper for green housing
The government published its Housing Green Paper recently, and I have now been able to have a quick flick through it. It looks pretty impressive at first glance.
A few points spring to mind. First of all, here’s hoping that they will be able find sufficient builders, bricklayers, electricians, and plumbers etc to do [...]
Housing more important now
An interesting snippet from the afternoon press briefing from No 10 for 28 June:
“On the role of the Minister for Housing, whilst the breadth of her responsibilities would stay the same, clearly the fact that she was in Cabinet sent a very clear message about the much greater importance of the Housing Minister and the [...]
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Homeless hostel VAT bill withdrawn
Readers may remember that in December I reported that a new homeless hostel in Newcastle was at risk because the VAT had ruled that it was a commercial building and not a hostel (mainly because they did not have a workable definition of a homeless persons hostel) and that therefore VAT was payable. [...]
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