Ben Reeve Lewis Friday Newsround #172

[Ben Reeve Lewis is feeling a teensy bit tired…]

I’ve been a bit worn down for the last couple of weeks.

Spending your day chasing rogue landlords is one thing but on top of the usual I’ve been finishing off some consultancy work in the East End, designing and delivering a training course in Cambridge whilst simultaneously designing a new course from scratch to deliver in the next couple of weeks.

I’m beyond tired. Weekends are gone and so are evenings.

At the lunch break whilst training the good folk of Cambridge council today I was sunning myself in the park and enjoying a rare relaxing 5 minutes when I noticed a missed call.

I keyed in to voicemail and got this precise, hurried and slightly garbled message “Hello Ben? It’s Dave. I’ve just left 134 D*****m Way, massive cannabis farm if you’re interested. See ya later”.

My life.

Self determined holidays

I need a holiday but at the moment all of my rapidly dwindling annual leave is spent delivering training courses, which is why my eye was drawn to the news that Richard Branson is abandoning annual leave entitlement for his workforce and letting them take as much as they need, as long as the tasks they are employed to do get done.

Let’s face it, billionaire Branson is nobody’s fool, a sound business head indeed so I’ll be interested to see if this idea catches on.

I’m very fond of radical, cutting edge ideas and the people who are brave enough to give them a go.

But of course then we have renting land, where radical ideas and innovation are about as common as a chicken on a surfboard.

A new dawn in Wales

As with last week I remain completely uninspired by the usual list of headlines of crisis, catastrophe and depression. I’m too tired to even get angry anymore.

I was intrigued however by the news that the Housing (Wales) Bill is now an Act, having received Royal Assent this week.

Many changes to things like homelessness regulation on top of everything else but what will be of most interest to readers of Landlord Law Blog is the news that landlords and agents are to be licensed under a national standard, administered by local authorities.

This of course flies in the face of Westminster’s continued refusal to regulate renting land so it will be interesting to see over the months leading up to the election whether the scheme catches fire, like Branson’s unlimited holidays.

Scotland’s landlord licensing scheme hasn’t exactly been a resounding success, maybe Wales can do better. [Also check out the Landlord Law Conference Wales – details coming soon, Ed]

Contrasting properties

In an attempt to avoid the normal housing news feeds I found London & Quadrant housing association’s waiting list of properties advertising this pokey, 1 bed Croydon flat  which is all most people can aspire to these days and then randomly bounced over the Curbed’s houses of the day  to look at a Texas based house priced at $10m and designed to look like a Tuscan villa.

Talk about different ends of the spectrum.

Nearly Legal and the Focus E15 Group

In my search to avoid normal housing news this week I got suckered in by Giles Peaker over on Nearly Legal, who begins his article:

“This is not exactly a housing law post,”

Only to find that is exactly what it was….shame on you Mr P.  Dragging me back into the quagmire of dis-inspiration with the news that a disgruntled group of Newham homelessness applicants have banded together to fight their council’s desire to relocate them to Manchester and prioritise working people on the housing waiting list.

But at the end of the day it’s another innovative and radical idea that deserves an airing.

Imagine more homeless applicants banded together to challenge local authorities en-masse? Oh dearie me that would be a cat and pigeon situation wouldn’t it?

The group, known as the Focus E15 Group have occupied a property left empty on the Olympic site that is earmarked to sell to developers.  Nearly Legal comments:

“Whatever the purposes in selling the land (and it must be said that Newham have made as yet unrealised promises about a substantial house building programme), it cannot be denied that empty, habitable council properties left vacant for a speculative land sale are a potent symbol of the current crisis in London.”

Yes indeedy. More London properties by the day are being targeted at foreign investors which simultaneously prices ordinary Londoners out of the market……………………….
Wooooah there!!!!!!!!!! I’m getting dragged back into default griping.

What else is out there?

Thieving kids

Well surprisingly this piece on 24 Dash got my attention.  A survey which showed that grown up children are increasingly responsible for ripping off their parents in cash and housing.  The article reports:

“Many of the familial crooks either defrauded their relatives of money, sold their homes without consent, or applied pressure such as blackmail to persuade an elderly person to give away their home”.

It transpires that the:

“National charity Action on Elder Abuse’s (AEA) alarming report on the extent of theft committed against older people by their own families reveals that sons and daughters are the people most likely to rob older people, making up 51% of all villains. – Of the 680 incidents analysed, nearly £6.5m was reported as stolen or coerced from older people, with a further £18m taken through property fraud.”

Wow….and you thought it was all just dodgy driveway tarmac scams.

The bit at the end

Right. That’s all the inspiration I can manage this week. It’s late, I’ve been up since 5am, training for 2 days in Cambridge and now I’ve got to pick Frazzy up from her Jive classes.

Whilst driving solo the dog has become fond of sitting in the passenger seat, paws on dash board, surveying the street.

I’m going to put a sticker on the back of the car saying “Caution, left hand drive” and watch people overtaking, glancing over to see how he is doing it.

See ya next week.

To read about Ben’s innovative new course (on dealing with your Council and criminal tenants) click here.