My slot will be at 12.45, and I will be speaking at the letting agents “theatre” on points of law and practice.  I hope to be covering a bit of agency law, some information about tenancy agreements, some points on tenancy deposits, the Foxtons case, and answer any questions.

So if you are an agent and just happen to be at Olympia tomorrow at 12.45, I hope you will drop in!  It will be in Seminar Room 2.

How it all started

I was contacted yesterday, Tuesday, (my birthday actually) by a lady from BBC South East and asked about a situation where a lady has come back from working abroad to find that she can’t live in her house, as her tenant refuses to move out (reported online here). I chatted the researcher through the law and thought that was that.

An hour or so later I was contacted again, and asked if I could record a clip for them to use on the show. They arranged for me to do it locally (as I live in Norwich not Tunbridge Wells). So I went in to the BBC centre at the Forum in Norwich to do this.

First take

It was a bit weird. The camera was in a very busy office with lots of people all working around me. I was perched on a high office chair with a bank of equipment in front of me, and the camera on top.

To my left was a plate glass window looking down on the Forum entrance area (which is pretty big) and the mezzanine cafe above. I had to stick a microphone up my blouse, a small earpiece in my ear, and then, ignoring all the activity around me, stare into the camera and talk about residential landlord and tenant law.

What I told them was that when you rent a property to a tenant, in effect you are selling the property to them for a slice of time, and if the tenant fails to move out, you can only get it back if you follow ‘due process’ and get a court order for possession.

Second take

This morning I was rung up again. This time by BBC South. They quite liked the clip, and wanted a live interview for their 6.30 pm regional news program. So in I went again. The same camera and busy office, but a different camera man (a very nice camera man, in fact everyone was very nice and friendly, both times).

This time I told them that if you have a situation where the tenant’s financial situation changes for the worse, they will often want to be re-housed by the local authority. In which case they will be told not to move out, or they will lose their right to be re-housed. The landlord will have to evict them through the courts if he wants his property back. Which could take a long time – probably three to six months, or even longer if things do not go well.

So that was that. Thank you and good bye.

So what did I make of it all?

It was quite fun doing it, very much a new experience. But, I found, television is a bit like court work. A lot (a LOT) of hanging around, and then a period of intense concentration where you have to speak about something complex and make sense of it.

Telly work v. court advocacy

On the one hand court work is very stressful as you are largely responsible for the success or failure of your clients case. However you get a lot more time to do it, and can pause and look at your notes from time to time.

With telly, on the other hand, you only get a very short period of time to say whatever-it-is, and if you screw up, you’ll look like a prat in front of millions of people. Put like that, I suppose the only question is why anyone is prepared to do either!

Of the two, I think court work is by far the more stressful. Better to look like an idiot in front of millions than be the cause of someone losing their legal case, which could be a disaster for them personally. When you make a mistake as a lawyer it is THE worst thing ever, and you beat yourself up about it for months, years, after. Looking an idiot hurts no-one, and you can laugh about it later.

Did you watch the program? What did you think? Which would you prefer to do –advocacy or telly work?

It was a good event, and I was quite honoured to be sharing a platform with Jan Luba QC, who is a far better speaker, and far more knowledgeable, than I will ever be. As would be expected, his sessions on possession proceedings, and landlords and their agents, were excellent.

It was also delightful to meet J, one part of the Nearly Legal team, who only last night did a comment on my Ancient Law post.  As regular readers of this blog will know, I am a huge admirer of the Nearly Legal Blog (discussed on this post here) which is now a really authoritative source of housing case law. And yes, I will be reinstating my blogroll with NL in place of honour, in due course!

Professional Conferences are really good value .  I think the course cost around £100, which for a days course with speakers of the quality of Jan Luba and Siobhan McGrath (who unfortunately I was not able to stay to hear), and about 6 hours CPD, is a bit of a bargain.

But if you are feeling a bit sick at having missed it, I expect there will be another one next year!

The day started with an interesting overview of recent developments from Rafael Runco, the Deputy Housing Ombudsman,. There was then an excellent presentation on HMOs and the HHSRS from David Smith of Pain Smith Solicitors (and landlords looking for help in these areas could do a lot worse than instruct his firm, one of the few who have real expertise in this area). I also enjoyed the talk from Tracey Bloom on possession orders and the problems with suspended orders and tolerated trespassers.

In the afternoon we had a great talk from Professor Martin Partington, who some of you may remember was responsible for overseeing part of the Law Commissions housing law reform program. This was followed by a fascinating talk from Sue Highmore, formerly of Linklaters and now a freelance writer and trainer, on the new Equality Bill which is currently going through Parliament. The day finished with talks from Professor James Driscoll, and Siobhan McGrath, Senior President of the Residential Property Tribunal (which I was not able to stay for).

The main ‘new’ thing I learned on the day is that the government is likely to increase the rent limit for assured shorthold tenancies from £25,000 to £100.000, probably with effect from April 2010. Which will of course bring many more properties into the ambit of the tenancy deposit regulations. But I will write more about this if it is confirmed.

But a good day all round and I now have lots of notes and new information which can form the subject matter of new blog posts (unless I can persuade the speakers to write the posts themselves as a guest blogger!).

I arrived at about 3.30pm, so was able to talk to a few people before doing my talk (Essential Legal Points for Landlords). So I chatted with the staff from Alan Boswell, Richard Bowser, editor of Property Investor News Magazine, and a young man from Legal4Landlords. I was delighted to learn that he and his colleagues regularly check up on the law with Landlord Law, but taken aback to learn that they are not members! Maybe I should make my free tips less informative! My talk went reasonably well, with some good questions afterwards.

After the talk I did a bit of a wander. It was particularly nice to meet up again with Tom Entwistle of the excellent LandlordZone website. We were both attending the Landlord & Buy to Let Awards dinner that night as we had both been Judges. Also at our table were Simon Gordon, Head of Communications of the National Landlords Association (NLA) and the glamorous Sussanne Chambers, director of the NLA. It was nice to have an opportunity to talk to them, and it was a good evening.

It was also interesting (having been involved in the Judging) to see who won. The awards were announced by Konnie Huq, a television presenter. I don’t watch a lot of TV so had not seen her show, however she was charming, gave a very nice speech, and did as good a job as one can of reading out all the information about the awards winners. At our table we thought it might have been nicer to have the winners go up and receive their awards personally after they had been announced, however that was not her fault. The winners got the chance of having a picture taken with her afterwards, which I suppose will be a longer lasting memory (and one which will no doubt go up on many of their websites).

Unfortunately I failed to make a note of the winners as they were announced (too busy chatting) but I will do a link to the winners list once it is available. (NB – a list of the winners has now been published via here.)

On Saturday my talk was at 11.00am (Dealing with Rent Arrears) which went off fairly well. One of those attending was Liz Mooney, landlord Support and Development Officer at Sandwell Forums, and it was very nice to talk to her afterwards. She edits the newsletter, ‘The Bugle’ – I have not read it properly yet, but flicking through I see that one of the articles is headed ‘Another Senior Moment’. Glad its not just me then.

So thank you to the organisers, and apologies to anyone I spoke to who I have not mentioned here. But feel free to add a comment and remind me! Or just give comments on your experience of the event generally. I would welcome your views. And for those who attended the talks – did it meet your needs, and are there any other talk topics you would like me to do in future?