HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) have announced that the Mortgage Verification Scheme (MVS), which was developed in co-operation with the Council of Mortgage Lenders and the Building Societies Association and run as a pilot scheme in March 2010, is now fully...
It is common for service charges to be paid ‘on account’ of the annual cost, based on estimates, and a final account to be made up some time after the year end, based on the actual costs incurred. However, not all landlords are diligent about...
When an elderly woman passed away, her daughter, who was her personal representative, realised that some of her late mother’s land was occupied unlawfully by three people. She brought an action against them , seeking to recover possession of the land...
When does a commercial property become vacant under a lease agreement? This was the question considered in a recent hearing in the Court of Appeal . The appeal was brought by haulage and storage firm NYK Logistics (UK) Ltd., a former tenant of Netherlands...
A developer who completely demolished a property when he only had permission to demolish part of it has landed himself with a fine and legal costs totalling more than £120,000. The developer has been given a year to pay the £80,000 fine and the...
On 1 October 2011, changes to the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996 (normally called the Construction Act) came into force. The changes are contained in Part 8 of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009 ...
When a licensing application cannot be heard because insufficient information has been supplied relating to the primary use of the premises, the licensing authority must decide whether to grant the licence and deal with any issues through enforcement action...
If a claim is not defended, is a person indemnifying the defendant required to meet the claim in full? This question was at the core of a recent legal case involving a property development. The developer contracted with a subcontractor to carry out...
Building contracts often involve a multiplicity of documents, which sometimes have conflicting terms. In such cases, the liabilities under the contracts will depend on which of the various contractual terms has primacy over the others. In a recent...
New developments require planning permission, as is well known, and so do projects that affect the environment. But can demolition of an existing building be considered to be a project affecting the environment, thus meaning planning permission is required? ...
When a document contains errors, the court will often act to ensure that commercial common sense dictates its interpretation. In a recent case, a farmer sought to avoid an estate rentcharge for roads and sewers on the farm estate when the covenants in the...
From 6 April 2011, the Competition Act 1998 has been extended to cover agreements made with regard to land. Such agreements were previously excluded from the scope of the Act. The Act seeks to prohibit agreements etc. that prevent, restrict or distort...
A landlord’s attempt to obtain a rent based on the uplifted value of a property was rebuffed by the court because a term in the lease, which was worded in such a way that the rent set by the rent reviews would not take into account improvements made...
A tenant that served a break notice on its lease to the wrong person had a lucky escape recently when the court ruled that the notice was valid because the landlord’s agent had accepted it and this had the effect of waiving the defects in serving it....
Property company Daejan Investments Ltd. has failed in its bid to overturn Tribunal decisions concerning repair works carried out at the company’s Queens Mansions property in Muswell Hill, London. The recent Court of Appeal ruling will cost Daejan...
Who has the right to the airspace above a flat? This question was at the centre of a recent legal dispute involving a block of flats. The block of flats was wider at the bottom than on the upper floors, narrowing at the 6th. The 6th floor tenant obtained...
The Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) may give tenants the basis of a valid defence against a possession order sought against them. This was the ruling of the Supreme Court in a case in which a council sought to ‘demote’ the tenancy of a tenant as...
In summer 2010, two children died after becoming trapped in electrically powered gates. The accident happened in each case because their presence at the closing edge was not detected and the closing force of the gate when they obstructed it was too great. ...
A group of tenants who sought to acquire the freehold of the property they occupy met with failure recently , after the Court of Appeal found that the notice served on their landlord was invalid because it was not correctly signed by one of the tenants. ...
The High Court recently concluded that a property sale could not be subject to an agreement made two decades previously, as the circumstances of the transaction were not envisaged by the original agreement. The agreement related to a building divided into...
The Court of Appeal recently concluded that a potential property buyer was able to rescind the purchase contract owing to a defect in the title to the property concerned. The buyer had contracted to acquire the property, which was sold at auction, with...
The Court of Appeal has confirmed that when a local authority has obtained a liability order to claim unpaid council tax and wishes to enforce it using insolvency proceedings, the authority does not have to do so within six years of the granting of the...
When a development plan is passed which should have been subject to an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) but was not, does the granting of a retrospective consent for EIA development have force or is the planning authority obliged to take action against...
The core provisions of the Equality Act 2010 came into force on 1 October. The Act largely consolidates existing discrimination law, which had previously been found in a number of different pieces of legislation. One of the changes made by the Act is to...
Loss of light can be a major irritation and the law provides two remedies where it occurs. The usual remedy is for the developer of the structure responsible for the loss of light to make a payment to the person whose property’s light is impaired. The...
A recent case highlights the importance of making sure that procedural issues are dealt with correctly in the giving of formal notices. When a tenant wished to terminate its lease, it served the relevant notice on the landlord. At least, that is what it...
Virtually all contracts contain provisions which allow the parties concerned to cancel the contract in the event that the other party breaches it. However, with many contracts being complex and imposing a variety of obligations of varying importance on the...
The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) standard agreement forms have recently been updated. The new forms replace the 2007 versions and are available from the RIBA bookshop ....
Valuation, as any valuer will tell you, is an imprecise art. Claims against valuers for negligent valuations are therefore notoriously difficult to sustain. Recently, the court heard a claim brought by investors in hotels that a valuer had neglected to...
It is not often that decisions are quashed on the basis that the court in which a case was heard got the facts wrong, but a recent planning case shows that it can occur. The case concerned a planning application which related to two sides of a property....
A tenant wishing to vacate premises by terminating its lease should read the break clauses in the lease carefully and comply fully with them: failing to do so can prove to be an expensive mistake. A recent case dealt with a dispute over a notice to...
Two landlords were recentlly successful in persuading the High Court that a Corporate Voluntary Arrangement (CVA), under which they stood to lose the benefit of a guarantee for their rent, was ‘unfairly prejudicial’ to them as defined by...
A sale and leaseback agreement between a landlord and tenant was the subject of a recent court case . The decision turned on whether it was reasonable to refuse to comply with the agreement if vacant possession of a very small portion of the property could...
One of the reasons a contract can be abandoned is that the performance of the contract is ‘frustrated’ – something happens which makes it impossible to complete. In August 2007, the builders Barratt contracted with site owner Gold Group...
It has been commonly accepted that where a construction contract gives rise to ‘liquidated and ascertained damages’ (LADs) for breach of the contract terms, the liability for the LADs ends when the contract is terminated. It now appears that that...
Local Fire Authorities no longer issue fire certificates. The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 introduced a risk-based approach to fire safety, making it a legal requirement for the person responsible to carry out a fire-risk assessment for all...
An easement (such as a right of way) is a right over someone else’s land. A right of easement, once granted, is quite often forgotten about. However, a recent case shows how important it can be to make sure that an easement does not lapse through...
Litigation can be expensive and there are good reasons in many cases for achieving a resolution by mediation when possible. The best course of action will depend on the individual circumstances of the case. Recently, a court case was settled after a...
Social Housing providers will greet a recent decision of the Supreme Court with relief. The Court upheld a local council’s decision that it had discharged its duty to secure accommodation for persons who were homeless by sending each of them a...
Little publicised, but nonetheless important for many private landlords, are changes implemented by the Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) (Amendment) (England) Order 2010 , which mean that, in certain circumstances, a landlord wishing to let out a...
Most people – and certainly those who have been involved in an opposed planning application – know what a NIMBY is but, following a case heard in the Supreme Court, we may now see the rise of NOOViGs (not on our village greens). The reason for...
Construction projects inevitably lead to a large number of contracts being created between the various contractors, subcontractors, suppliers and developers involved. This in turn can produce problems in the event of a dispute, as it can be difficult to...
Insolvencies have been running at a high rate for some time now, presenting problems for landlords and tenants alike. It should be remembered that the expenses of the administration of an insolvent company rank for payment before debts due to unsecured...
Many developers have been faced with the problem of having to persuade buyers who bought ‘off plan’ before the credit crunch struck to complete their purchases in the light of the subsequent decline in property prices. If you are faced with such...
When a tenant’s lease is governed by the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 , the landlord has limited grounds for refusing to renew the lease. One possible ground is that the landlord wishes to make use of the premises for its own business purposes. In a ...
A company that was part of a group recently found that it had breached its lease when a corporate reorganisation was carried out. The problem arose because the lease on the company’s premises contained a clause that the tenant company was allowed to...
Following a refusal of planning permission, it is far from unusual for the unsuccessful application to be amended and re-submitted in the hope that, the second time, the outcome will be different. A recent case arose from this situation,...
The British Retail Consortium (BRC) has been campaigning for the past few years to try to encourage more commercial landlords to accept monthly rental payment arrangements instead of the quarterly payments commonly used. Although the BRC began pushing for...
Builders and homeowners who wish to delay the start of building projects in these troubled times can breathe more easily now that the time limits for extensions to planning permissions have been lengthened. From 1 October 2009, an application to extend the...
In a recent case, the courts had to consider the legality of a commercial arrangement undertaken by a bank with a company, the effect of which was to allow the company to ‘stand in its shoes’ with regard to a commercial lease. At issue was...
If a landlord has concealed or misrepresented facts, it can be ordered to pay a departing commercial tenant compensation for any damages or loss sustained by the tenant that arise as a result of having to quit the premises. The legislation bringing this...
