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…
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 –…
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…
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 all…
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…
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…
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Homeless hostel VAT bill withdrawn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. The VAT…