Housing law in crisis

The Law Society Gazette was rather a worrying read this week. Amid tales of criminal legal aid solicitors going on strike, and DCA leadership not being fit for purpose, was this news item on plummeting legal aid housing contracts which have fallen from 840 to 587 – a drop of some 30%. A bet that there are quite a few housing law deserts out there – 587 firms cannot cover the whole country, particularly as I suspect quite a few of those are in London.

I attended a housing conference last week. The speaker on unlawful eviction confirmed that in his experience the police simply refuse to take any action when someone is illegally evicted - despite that fact that it is a criminal offence. And yet being unlawfully evicted from your home must be the most traumatic experience.

So if the poor old illegally evicted tenant can’t get any help from the police and there are hardly any legal aid housing solicitors for him to consult – how is he going to be able to enforce his rights to re-instatement (if he wants it) and compensation? Drafting a decent court claim for compensation for unlawful eviction is not easy as there are so many different causes of action – it would be a difficult job for most litigation solicitors, let alone a litigant in person.

Its not fair is it? And what is the point of making something a criminal offence if the police refuse to deal with it?

Happy birthday to me!

I see that my very first blog entry was on Friday 17th February last year - so this blog is now one year old! Its been quite fun so I expect I will continue.

Feed me!!

Eminent legal blogs have predicted that RSS will explode in 2007, so who I am to argue? We have now finally added a RSS feed to my Landlord-Law site, which gives links to new items recently uploaded.

Not without a certain amount of angst from me, as I continue to find this really simple technology a bit difficult to follow sometimes. However my web-designer Gill did admit that not all of it is really simple, which gives me some comfort (although perhaps she was just being polite).

I am now using RSS feeds on my Google personalised home page which means that I can easily view and keep up with news, legal blogs, and of course the Doctor Who news page and outpost Gallifrey! I find I use it all the time now, and have five tabbed paged of links!

There is also a feed for this blog which you should find right at the bottom of the screen if you scroll down. Although if you use Mozilla Firefox, the feed icon on your toolbar should go red and you will be able to subscribe by clicking that. This doesn’t work with the Landlord-Law feed though - I have no idea why not, another one of the 'really confusing' things about this 'really simple' system.

Merger Mania

The word on the street is that ARLA (the association of Residential Letting Agents) and NAEA (National Association of Estate Agents) are to merge. See this report. The official verdict is that this is a 'major step in the protection of the consumer, the professionalism of the residential property industry and a benefit for all those employed in residential sales and lettings'

However others are not too sure. A later report expresses grave concern. A major letting agency, Leaders have issued a press release on the subject. I myself have spoken to another letting agent who was very worried that ARLA will be subsumed by the estate agents organisation and the needs of letting agents, which differ, will less well catered for. His company is a member of the Guild of Letting and Management. If the merger goes ahead, I suspect that the Guild will do rather well out of it.

Another merger on the cards is between two landlords organisations, the National Federation of Residential Landlords (NFRL) and the Southern Private Landlords Association (SPLA). See this press release. This will mean that there will be two large landlords organisations – The National Landlords Association, and the merged NFRL and SPLA.

Interestingly the National Landlords Association has been awarded a contract to run one of the two insurance based tenancy deposit schemes, the one which is supposed to be aimed at landlords. However the NFRA/SPLA is offering its members a scheme using the other insurance based scheme, provided by the Dispute Service Ltd, which I understand was aimed primarily at letting agents. Could this mean that the two landlords associations do not like each other?

An interview on the Tenancy Deposit Scheme

I did my first recorded interview yesterday. It was an interview of Lawrence Greenberg who runs the Dispute Service Ltd, one of the three companies contracted to run the new Tenancy Deposit Scheme ("TDS"), scheduled to start from April 2007.

I am afraid you can't listen to it unless you are an annual member of Landlord-Law as it is a 'members only' content. However I think Landlords will find it very interesting. Here are a few points which arose from my talk with Lawrence and his colleagues during my time with them.

Landlords must have a detailed inventory. It is clear that in a dispute where there is no inventory, landlords run the risk of losing their case simply because of the lack of inventory. They need to be very, very detailed.

Photos are a waste of time unless they are very clear and focused and contain a ruler or something similar to show the scale. I have to say that photographs clients have sent to me in the past when I have been advising about their tenants liability for damage, have generally been pretty useless.

Tenants need to protect their position and make sure that any damage to the property or its furniture is marked on the inventory at the check in meeting, otherwise there will be no way to prove that the damage was not done by them, and they will be at risk of having to pay for it out of their damage deposit.

I did not discuss any actual fee charges with Lawrence, but I suspect that the cost of the insurance scheme may be more than people think, especially at first. Not so much perhaps for agents who are members of one of the national associations (particularly those who are already clients of the Dispute Service’s existing TDS scheme), but for private landlords who may be an 'unknown quantity' and therefore a higher risk.

Of course landlords who do not want to pay for TDS can use the custodial scheme (this is not the scheme run by Lawrence’s company but one of the two others). However if so they will have to hand the deposit over to the scheme. One of the people I spoke to (not Lawrence) expressed doubts as to whether the company running this scheme, Computershare Investor Services PLC, would be able to make a profit, as the government is not making any contribution to their running costs, their only income will be the interest on the deposits held, and part of this will have to be paid out to the tenant.

Anyway it was great fun doing the interview, just like a real radio journalist! I had a chat with a BBC man a few months ago who gave me a few tips, one of which being to look the interviewee in the eyes during the interview so you can judge when to speak. I did find that a great help.

I shall have to do some more …

Trends in buy to let

There is an interesting article here on buy to let mortgages (which will be 10 years old this summer) which shows that they are highly successful and indeed less risky (for the lender) than residential mortgages as only 0.68% are in arrears of more than three months, compared to 0.97% of normal loans.

Buy to let mortgages now account for 8% of the housing stock in the UK and the buy to let market is worth over £73 billion. However the average property portfolio is still fairly small although it has apparently has increased from three per landlord in 1996 to seven this year, and research has revealed that 83 per cent of landlords plan to increase or maintain their portfolios in the next six months.

However in the future this dominance of the market by small investors may change. This article in the Times indicates that larger investors, such as pension funds, looking for a steady income flow, may be looking to increase their investment in this area. We could be also looking in the future at considerably more ‘build to let’. This is common in Germany, Holland and several other European countries, where many people live for years or even decades in blocks of flats owned by banks or other financial institutions, but is fairly rare in the UK.

The disincentive for the larger investors may be that residential property is management intensive - finding tenants, chasing rent arrears, dealing with repairs - and the large city investors (suggest the Times) would not want to be directly involved in this work.

However there is no doubt that residential property has proved itself over the past 10 to be a sound investment and no doubt will remain popular, at least with the smaller landlord, and possibly also with the big boys.

My talk at London Landlords Day September 2006

You may be interested to see a recording which was done of a talk I did at London Landlords Day last September on Essential Legal Points for Landlords here. Be warned that the first few minutes is the camera running before I start talking (there is a long shot of the emergency exit notice for example and quite a lot of the walls).

I am a bit in two minds about giving this link because as usual my hair looks dreadful, but I do cover quite a bit of ground, if the subject of landlord and tenant law interests you.

Which UK law is most in need of reform?

There is an interesting article in The Times online today, where members of their law panel nominate the area of law they consider to be most in need of reform.

I like the answer given by Professor Adrian Briggs, who suggests that law which affects ordinary people should be written in a language which is easy for them to understand. This is also reflected in the response of Andrew Arden QC who says that some legislation almost looks as if it were deliberately designed to be unintelligible to those whom it most affects, citing the Housing Benefit Regulations as an example.

I would add that if the Law Commission has spent a considerable amount of time working on a much needed piece of legal reform, for example the Renting Homes Bill, carrying out huge amounts of public consultation, it seems madness not to use it. But maybe it will be included in the next Queens Speech.

What piece of legislation do you think is most in need of reform?

Legal Professional Training Ltd

A new year, a new business venture. This year it is a new training company called Legal Professional Training Ltd, "LPT" for short.

LPT has been some time in the making. I and several others were to do some lecturing last year for a training company which then went under. We were a bit upset about losing the potential earnings, and some of us decided to go it on our own. Eventually LPT was formed. Basically it consists of me, Martin Iller, Deputy District Judge, author and solicitor, Diana Iller (yes, former wife but a long time ago – they are still speaking) solicitor, and Director of Postgraduate Studies at Thames Valley University, and my husband Graeme, employment specialist and a former trade union man. Martin and I are going to do the housing courses and Diana and Graeme do the employment/discrimination stuff. I think we will all make a good team.

If we can battle our way through the paperwork that is. We incorporated on 4 December 2006. Jordans did that – they were very efficient and helpful, no problems there. The problems are mainly with getting the bank account opened. We all live in different places (well, not Graeme and I, but the others do) so it is a nightmare getting the papers signed plus the bank then went and lost them, so most of it has to be done again. And until we have a bank account we cannot really register for VAT or do anything else much. So as I have some courses I want to start advertising, they are being run technically as Landlord-Law courses ‘in association’ with LPT for the time being. Hopefully we will not have to do this for too long.

So what sort of courses will we do and how will they be run? Well for the online training we are using an open source course management software called ‘Moodle’. I had never heard of it before Martin mentioned it but it is really good. Apparently Open University use it and lots of schools and colleges. We now have a moodle training site and I have done a fair bit of training on how to create the courses.

We also want to do some traditional face to face training, and will be looking to develop courses and such over the year. We will also do in house stuff if people want it.

So there you are. I spent much of the Christmas period creating two moodle courses (in between cooking turkey and watching Dr Who DVDs with my offspring) one of which is ready to roll and the other is scheduled to run for four weeks from the end of March.

The main course in March is on tenancy agreements – so many people fail to understand the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 or even realise that they exist. I saw a tenancy agreement provided by some landlord software only the other day which was way out of date and wide open to successful defences by tenants against possession claims (e.g. for rent) during the fixed term. More courses are to follow, on contracts of employment and discrimination law, just as soon as the employment team can find time to create them.

To find out more, why not visit our web-site at www.professionallegaltraining.com?

Five things

To those who do not know, there is this sort of tag thing going around, I do not know where it came from, but UK legal bloggers are all tagging each other to tell 5 things about themselves that others don’t know about, and then tag 5 other bloggers. I have been tagged by two sites, Impact and Family law.

I don’t mind telling 5 things about myself you probably didn’t know, if you don’t mind reading them. Here goes:

1. In the late 1980s I took a year out to travel and spent about 7 months in Mexico. I learnt Spanish and stayed on a farm and had a great time. I have forgotten a lot of the Spanish but I expect I could get it back if I tried (although my language ability is about moron level, I learned at about half the speed of everyone else).

2. I originally studied geography (at Hull University) – at that time I no more thought that I would end up a lawyer than go to the moon (law students were sad people who spent most of their time on the second floor of the Brynmor Jones library). I am still interested in environmental matters, as you can see from much of this blog

3. After Hull, I went for teacher training, but gave it up after teaching practice, as the prospect of spending the rest of my life trying to teach 15 year olds who did not want to learn geography, was to awful to contemplate. Best decision of my life (almost).

4. I don't like potatoes. This means that a fish and chip supper is a bit of an unbalanced meal for me. Everyone always assumes that everyone likes potatoes as a matter of course.

5. I don’t drive. When I was young I couldn’t afford it. Now I’m older I am too scared to learn. Its not a real problem though. What you have never had you don’t miss, and it is of course better for the planet. Besides, my husband is a much better driver than I could ever be.

The second stage of the tagging exercise is a bit of a problem as I think most of the bloggers I know of have already been tagged. Still here goes. Corporate blawg, Legal spy, Terminological Inexactitudes, Head of Legal, and the Criminal Solicitor. All good blogs.

Landlord success in disability discrimination case

There is an interesting report in the Times on a case, Williams v Richmond Court (Swansea) Ltd (heard on 14 December 2006), on disability discrimination. The landlord was appealing against the Judge's finding against him at first instance that he discriminated against 81 year old tenant Mrs Williams who had requested he install a stair lift, as she found it difficult to use the stairs.

The Court of Appeal found that the landlords did not discriminate, as the reason they had refused to install the stair lift was not because Mrs Williams was disabled. The reasons given by them for refusing consent included, (i) that the other tenants had voted against the proposal; (ii) aesthetics; (iii) the cost of repair; (iv) inconvenience to the residents as a whole; and (v) the Disability Rights Commission code of practice made it clear that it was not under any duty to make reasonable adjustments to the premises.

The Court of Appeal said that Judges have to carry out a two-stage exercise. First, it was necessary to identify the relevant act or omission on the part of the appellant, and second, it was necessary to look to comparators to see if they were or would have been treated differently.

Here, none of the reasons given by the landlord for refusing consent related to Mrs Williams’ disability. The underlying complaint was that the they had failed to put her in a better position than that to which she was entitled by her underlease, namely by failing to take positive action and providing consent to the installation of the stair-lift.

Landlords will no doubt feel fairly pleased at this judgment. I am sorry I am unable to provide a BAILLI link but the case does not appear to have been reported there yet.

Two more bad landlord stories

Landlords may moan about the new HMO licensing rules, but two stories which have come my way recently show that there are still bad landlords out there.

Firstly, this report on Youillscar Mohammed a Landlord in Glasgow who not only let out HMO properties without the proper fire precautions, but asked tenants to lie for him so he would not have to pay the license fee.

Then there is our old friend, ASBO landlord Dickens from North Wales, who has (according to a report in the Daily Post) recently had charges brought against him under the gas safety regulations. Although apparently he has now sold most of his portfolio, so the tenants of Conwy are now fairly safe from him.

I dare say these are not the only offenders. Although I agree that the disparity in the license fees across the different authorities is unfair, I do think that basically the regulation of landlords, at least in the more vulnerable HMO area, is justified, if it helps prevent this sort of thing, and keeps tenants safe.

Publishing for profit

I get sent books from time to time to review for my Landlord-Law site and I recently received a copy of Regulating Conditions in the Private Rented Sector: A Practical Guide, by Caroline Hunter and Andrew Dymond from Arden Chambers published by Thomson/Sweet & Maxwell. I was quite looking forward to receiving this, as the authors are distinguished lawyers and it is an area of law which I write about quite a lot. However although it will undoubtedly be a very useful book for me which I expect I will use a lot, I am a bit disappointed.

My main gripe is that virtually half of the book is appendices, most of which are extracts from statutes. However is there really any need for statutes to be reproduced in text books any more, in this age of online legislation? Particularly since the UK Statute Law Database has been published (although admittedly it would not have been made public when this book went to press).

At £85 this is not a cheap book. It is about an inch thick and on first glance you might think, "OK, eighty five quid for an inch thick book of analysis on a new area of law from specialist counsel, that’s acceptable". But is it acceptable to be paying effectively forty pounds for a reproduction of statutes which you can get free on the internet? It would be very easy just to have a list of relevant statutes and the url of the Statute Law Database and leave it to the reader to look them up. This book is after all aimed at the professional legal market, virtually all of whom will (or should) have broadband on their desktop computers and probably also their laptops. But if the statutes were eliminated, would we still feel happy about paying eighty five pounds for a slim volume of just half an inch thick? Probably not.

The internet is changing everything. I suspect that lawyers, a deeply traditional species mostly still steeped in paperwork and pink tape, will one day wake up to fact that legal publishers are charging a fortune for something they can now get easily for free, and refuse to pay any more. However this may not be until the younger solicitors trained on computers and the internet start to make partner status.

Tenancy deposit scheme contractors named

Well we now know the companies who are going to run the tenancy deposit protection schemes. From 6 April every landlord who takes a damage deposit will have to be a member of one of these three schemes.

The first is the general custodial scheme. This will be free of charge and open to everyone. The deposits will have to be handed over to the scheme administrators who will hold them until the end of the tenancy (the interest on the money held will pay for the scheme costs). So not very popular with landlords who like to have the deposit handy to use for repair and other work, and also to swell their own bank account. The company running it is to be Computer Investor Services PLC, a large company whose web-site gives little information about the scheme other than a pdf press release.

There are then two ‘insurance backed’ schemes. These are the schemes which will allow the landlord to hang on to the deposit money, so long as he pays an insurance premium (so the company can pay the deposit back to the tenant if the landlord fails to cough up at the end of the tenancy).

The first of these is being run by the Dispute Service Ltd. This is the same company which has been running a (very successful) trial scheme for letting agents for the past year or so. The current scheme is just for agents who are members of ARLA, the NAEA and RICS, but the statutory scheme will be open to other agents and landlords. The chief executive is Lawrence Greenberg who was also in charge of the tenancy deposit scheme trialed by the Independent Housing Ombudsman several years ago, so he is very experienced in this type of work. I note for example that this is the only one of the three companies who will be providing their own arbitration service rather than using the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. I suspect that this scheme will have the least teething problems, in view of their past experience.

Finally there is Tenancy Deposit Solutions Ltd, which is sponsored by the National Landlords Association and which will be administered by Hamilton Fraser Insurance. I understand that the National Landlords Associations' initiative (which will no doubt help increase their membership) has annoyed greatly some of the other landlords associations. There is a surprising amount of friction and antagonism between the various landlords associations (and sometimes even within individual associations) which is a bit of a shame really, as they all ought to pull together rather than wrangling among themselves. After all no-one else is going to look out for their interests. However it is good to see that at least one of the schemes will have a (no doubt considerable) input from landlords, who will probably ensure that it is run in a landlord friendly manner. I am sure that this scheme will be very popular among landlords.

So there you are. The delegated legislation which will set out the rules and regulations governing how precisely these schemes are to operate has not yet been published, but is expected to be laid before Parliament some time early in the new year.

Going green electric

I was very pleased to see this article in the Cash section of the Observer this Sunday. Like a lot of people probably, we have been thinking of switching to a more environmentally friendly electricity company but were confused about which company would be the best.

The answer, according to the Ob, is Good Energy, which it seems is the only one to source its supply 100% from renewable sources. Sounds good to me. I expect we will be switching soon, but I just want to think about it a little bit longer …

I interview Dalek Sec

We are huge Doctor Who fans in our house, so when I bought some lapel mikes for my recording equipment, my son Patrick insisted that I interview him as a Dalek. Landlord and tenant law on Skaro seemed the obvious choice of topic, although purists will realise that of course this interview is impossible as Skaro was destroyed in the time war. We only thought of that afterwards.

We did not really have a script but made it up as we went along having discussed a few ideas first. It was Patrick’s idea to mention the oncoming storm (if you have watched the new series you will understand this), my husband suggested enslaving the Thals, and I was determined to escape via a ventilation shaft.

I have loaded the interview up to my web-site as a bit of Christmas fun, and you can listen to it here.

One rule for treasury draftsmen ...

In these days of plain English and legislation against unfair and unclear terms in consumer contracts, one can’t help wishing that there was something similar which applied to statutory instruments.

I have been trying to make sense of The Disability Discrimination (Premises) Regulations 2006 but I have to say that so far I have found them almost wholly impenetrable. Of course this may be because their general literary style is so deeply boring it is difficult to work up much interest in mentally cross referencing the necessary three or four sections so you can work out what the section you are looking at is talking about.

If this sort of thing was printed in a consumer contract it would be slated by the OFT as unfair and be unenforceable. But although this is not a contract, it is relevant to consumers, as presumably not only lawyers will need to know about disability discrimination in premises. But it is drafted in such a way that most ordinary people will never be able to understand it. Even the explanatory note at the bottom is not wholly clear. Would that treasury draftsmen were subject to the same drafting rules as the rest of us!

Financing the courts

I was talking to someone who knows the other day, who told me that many courts are experiencing horrendous financial problems. Their funding is insufficient and they are having to make more and more cuts, which are affecting the services that they provide. For example badly paid staff, with no proper training resulting in a high staff turnover, not enough money to employ sufficient deputy district judges which means huge back logs with box work and delayed court hearings. All very bad news.

Well one answer is perhaps for the courts to become a bit more commercial and start earning some extra income. Here are a few suggestions:

A monthly newsletter. I have always thought that this would be a good idea – it could have announcements about court services, new initiatives etc, letters from readers, articles by Judges about procedures not being followed properly, Q&A sections, information about new court rules and procedures and the like. Virtually all solicitors firms and barristers chambers would no doubt subscribe. If the court charged £250 pa and got 200 subscriptions that would be £50,000 per year. It could be either paper or electronic.

Guided tours around the courts. Sounds awful but if stately homes can make money at it, why not the courts? The guide could give information about the judicial and court system, plus some juicy stories about famous trials which had taken place and the like.

A business centre, e.g. for solicitors and lawyers. For example wi fi cards for laptops, a photocopying service, hire of computers with internet access, hire of standard legal books such as the green book by the day or half day, and fax facilities.

A bookshop selling legal books, both for the general public (for example the LawPack range) and text and other books for solicitors and barristers. Plus some bodice rippers for bored advocates to read in the advocates room if they have to wait a long time for hearings to come on and don’t have any work to do or colleagues to talk to! It could also usefully stock counsels notebooks and pens.

These are just a few ideas. I am sure there are many more. Courts could ask their staff to make suggestions, with a bonus paid for the best ideas. Staff could also give suggestions for savings as well – often quite junior members of staff can come up with brilliant ideas that no-one else has ever thought of.

So there you are. No doubt there are reasons why none of these can happen, but I am sure that if they made an effort and thought in a different and more entrepreneurial way, courts could do a lot to bring in some more cash. They are obviously not going to get it from the government.

Tenants book - any suggestions?

Nearing completion of my tenants book now. I have done most of the text and now need to check it and improve its readability.

I am worried however that it might be a bit weak on social tenancies. My main experience in the past 10 years or so has been with private tenancies. I know some of you lot do housing law – is there any advice you would like to pass on? What could tenants do, for example, which would make your job easier when they get around to consulting you? Is there anything in particular you think I ought to emphasise? Problems you see a lot of?

If you are a tenant - are there any sorts of problems you would particuarly want me to look at? I think I have them all covered but you never know ...

I am quite happy to credit good suggestions (so long as I know who you are).

Unbelievable arrogance

I have just had the dubious pleasure of watching Vera Baird QC, our legal aid minister, being questioned on Channel 4 lunchtime news about the legal aid reforms. When asked how vulnerable clients were going to manage if they have to travel up to 50 miles to get essential legal advice, she just shook her head in a patronizing manner and said that that this was simply not going to happen.

Actually, she told us, it is going to be better for everyone after the reforms come in, because (she implied) solicitors will be forced to manage their practices properly which will mean more money and work for all. In fact, those silly old solicitors are just making a fuss about nothing and will soon be grateful to the government for making them carry out these essential changes which will make their working lives so much better.

How stupid is she? Does she not know that all legal aid practices have had years of efficiency measures being imposed on them, auditing, five year plans, cost cutting exercises and the like. Does she really think that she, a government minister and barrister, knows better than the partners how to run a legal aid firm? And does she really think that solicitors are going to carry on doing legal aid work if these reforms come in, when there is other much more profitable work to be done? It is not solicitors, remember, who are going to suffer for all this, it is the clients.

So far as I can see there are two possible reasons for the governments attitude. One is that they want to kill the legal profession dead because an active legal profession is an embarrassment to them as they keep pointing out problems in their legislative program etc. The other is that they don’t have the cash and the Health Service is a more popular destination for any cash that they do have. I really hope it is the second, but sometimes I get paranoid and wonder if it is the first.

But if I had not given up legal aid work a long time ago, I would be very much tempted to give it up now and to write to Ms Baird and tell her that it was her smug patronizing attitude which had been the last straw.

If you feel as annoyed about all this as I do, support the Law Societies "What price Justice?" campagn.

Schools' junk mail problem

I was talking to a deputy head teacher recently who told me that they had a terrible problem (as apparently do all schools) with junk mail. The problem is disposing of it, as they apparently get charged for rubbish collection. So this totally useless rubbish mail, which they do not want, is actually costing them money to dispose of.

I wonder sometimes whether we can’t do more to stop junk mail, perhaps fining companies who persistently send it out to people and organizations who don’t want it. And before you mention it, although there is a fax preference service which businesses can register with to prevent unwanted faxes, so far as I am aware there isn’t one for business’s for mail.

Something should be done about it. Money paid to schools should be used for children’s education, not for disposing of junk mail they never asked for in the first place.

(Rant over!)

Inside the Insider

Rather against my better judgment I included 'The Insider' by Piers Morgan in my last Amazon order. But to my surprise I am really enjoying it. I had no idea that editors of the Mirror had such access to the great and famous. And he is delightfully rude to people (or at least he reports himself as being). He also shows an entertainingly childish "I’m going to get you for that" attitude, which reminds me a bit of those engines in 'Thomas the Tank Engine' who were always getting at each other and having feuds.

My husband thinks it a gross error of taste to have the book in the house at all, and refuses to believe that it could possibly be worth reading. "He's a complete toerag" he splutters "I can never forgive him for what he did to the Mirror, never, a once fine paper with columnists like Pilger and Foot". Thus speaks the diehard socialist.

Well personally, I wouldn’t read the Mirror in a million years anyway (unless perhaps I found it on a train seat on a long journey when I had forgotten to bring a book) so I don’t really care what he did to it. I still think the book is an entertaining read. Although deeply worrying too, if you think about it seriously.

There is one thing about buying a book written by a journalist, it is generally quite readable. They have after all had quite a bit of practice in writing. I enjoyed Andrew Marr’s book as well, very much, although it is quite different in tone.

I have introduced some Amazon links in one of the blocks to the right, just for fun and possible financial enrichment as I am an affiliate – I get something like a squillionth of a pound for every purchase. You may have to scroll up or down to see them depending on where this item is on the page.

Fleet heroes

I was delighted to read in the Observer today about the Energy Saving Trusts Fleet Hero awards. Mind you, I can’t find anything about it on the EST site – maybe they have just not got around to loading it up yet.

Still, on to the awards. Good stuff with Gateshead Local Authority increasing their bio fuel usage, and saving 300 tons of carbon dioxide per year and £77,000 in fuel costs by re-organizing the way it uses its fleet (green can often be cheaper!) and training their staff in ecodriving techniques. They were the overall winners. However the report also featured:

• The Bolton Alternative Fuels Co-operative which converts waste oil from local restaurants to biofuel for their members
• Goingreen which imports and sells small electric cars
• City Lawyers Tom Pakenham and Jonny Goldstone who left their jobs to start up eco taxi company greentomatocars
• Italian taxi company Bioshuttles which not only uses biofuels but also environmentally friendly detergents to wash vehicles, and
• The South West Regional Development Agency whose own staff devised their green transport policy which has resulted in 20% decrease in mileage
  

To name but a few. It is very exciting to see such enthusiasm for cutting carbon emissions.

What are you doing?

Legal aid? Problem sorted.

Thinking about the decline of legal aid while in the bath this morning (as you do), I thought "If I were in charge, what would I do?". Well here is my ‘from the bath’ solution, gratis, from someone who used to do legal aid but does it no longer.

Well, I think to start with, I would like to separate civil and criminal legal aid. From all I hear, it is the terribly expensive criminal trials which drain the legal aid funds. So if the civil stuff were separated out, it would show itself to be the inexpensive beast that it is.

Probably the best thing would be to have a fund. This could be used to underwrite legal costs, so solicitors could be certain of getting paid. Government could pay into the fund a specified amount, to cover those cases where the costs are not recovered from the other side. The fund could ‘earn money’ by taking on, once again, personal injury actions. The majority of these are successful so the insurers pay all the costs. However if the fund was the organization taking the risk, the ‘success fee’ currently paid to solicitors could be paid to the fund. No doubt insurance cover could be arranged, as now, to cover the risk of the claimant having to pay the other sides legal costs and experts fees.

So the fund could get income from the government (about the same as it pays now for civil stuff), interest from money held, success fees from civil claims which are successful, and would probably take a loss on most family cases. Housing cases – well some would be a cost but others, for example disrepair claims, could well bring in cash via the success fee. There would also have to be a statutory charge type arrangement to cover situations where a benefit is obtained but no costs are paid.

I have to say that I would prefer to see the fund administered by someone other than the Legal Services Commission – I think they are a horrendous organization (although with some very nice people working for them), realistically though I suppose we would probably get stuck with them. However as this is all imaginary anyway, let us say that the civil fund would be managed by a new organization – called something like the Civil Legal Costs Fund. Perhaps to be headed up by someone sensible from business, with a proven track record of running things efficiently.

The fund would have to be very carefully managed so its potential liability for costs (bearing in mind the proportion, statistically, of current cases which will not be a cost) did not exceed the amount of the fund. All cases would have to be assessed before being approved by the fund and strict limits applied, as with legal aid certificates.

Hopefully this system would be supported by solicitors. Although they would lose their success fee on PI cases, they would hopefully gain other work which would balance this out. And if they just did PI cases, then no doubt the option would remain to ignore the fund and carry on doing their own no win no fee agreements as now.

On reflection, and in an ideal world, I think I would prefer to see the scheme operate free of government altogether, i.e. be a private legal aid funding system. It would need a friendly multimillionaire to seed it by coughing up a few million, but it could be self funding thereafter. The advantage of being a private scheme is that it would be more likely to avoid the stultifying form filling and bureaucracy which inevitably accompanies any state funded system, and which makes them such a nightmare for all who work in them. Maybe it could start from a few firms and then gradually expand.

"But what about criminal legal aid?" I hear you ask, "You haven’t mentioned that!" Well I have never been a criminal practitioner so they will have to think up their own solution. Forcing government to think through the legal aid implications of new legislation would of course help.

However talking to a friend recently, he pointed out that government really needs the criminal practitioners because they are far, far cheaper than a state funded system would be. In a state funded system, the working time regulations would have to be followed strictly, whereas self employed solicitors can ignore them and just get on with the work. So they have the government over a barrel really. All they need to do is push this point home, which hopefully they are doing with their current go slows and strikes. Good luck to them.

So there you are. Problem sorted. What do you think?

But of course it is not really as easy as that.

Another missed opportunity

While doing research recently for my book, I was distressed to see that the Department of Communities and Local Government's Decent Homes Standard, which all social housing is supposed to meet by the end of 2010, does not not include a measure of energy efficiency.

I am constantly disappointed by this governments poor record on environmental matters. It seems that despite lip service to environmental concerns, in things which could make a real difference, they just forget about it. If all social housing landlords were forced to consider energy efficiency when looking at improvement works, this could have a tremendous beneficial effect. As it is, the cash strapped social landlords are not (save for the enlightened few) going to consider improvements they are not required to make.

Yet another missed opportunity.

Councils in crisis with HMO backlogs

An interesting article in Inside Housing gives the not entirely unexpected news that Local Authorities are finding it difficult to cope with all the licensing applications they have received. Indeed it appears that some of them have not issued any licenses at all yet.

A survey of 10 Councils by Inside Housing showed that 6,380 applications had been received but only 348 licences had been issued. Of course 10 is a very small sample and I am sure that many councils are doing splendidly. However I expect the general view put forward, that Councils are finding it difficult to deal with the applications received, is a true one. Indeed I would be surprised if this were not the case, bearing in mind that so many applications have had to be made at the same time, and that councils are unlikely to take on extra staff to deal with it.

The sad thing is that due to the pressure of dealing with the licensing applications, staff are unable to be out there dealing with the bad landlords, none of whom will have submitted their applications.

Still it is not all doom and gloom. One day they will get over the bulge of work and be able to take stock of the situation. They will then know who is good and who is bad. And hopefully then, there will be the will and the power to deal with the bad landlords.

Tenants Book

I’m writing a book. A book for tenants this time (I have already done one for Landlords - see left). Its coming along quite nicely, I have done over 40,000 words so far, but I thought having a blog I ought to use it to vent my angst from time to time, on writing niggles and so on. Otherwise why have a blog?

Mind you I am not going to tell you all about the book, I will tell you that when it is published (so it will be a nice surprise for you!). But it aims to help tenants through the minefields of residential landlord and tenant law.

I’m hoping to make it easy to understand and am trying to make my English as plain as I can. However it is difficult sometimes when you are a lawyer and legal phrases are second nature to you. I have to keep stopping myself and saying “they’ll never understand that, you will have to re-phrase that”. Which of course makes the book very wordy as most legal phrases are verbal shortcuts, so we can refer to complex concepts without having to explain them every time. Difficult.

Also I keep coming across nasty holes in the law where I cannot find the answer to questions I suspect tenants will expect to have answered. For example there is a common law implied covenant that rented properties will be fit for habitation on the first day of the tenancy, which only applies to furnished lets. But I cannot find any definition of what a furnished/unfurnished let actually is! Does 'unfurnished' mean no furniture at all? Does 'furnished' mean the furniture must be sufficient for the tenant to be able to move in and live in straightaway (for example have all necessary beds and chairs)? What about lets where only kitchen white goods are included?

I suspect there may be something on the Inland Revenue site about this and I will have to brace myself to take a look there. If you can help do leave a comment. I am sure that there must have been a case on this at some time.

More on the book later ...

Licensing lemmings

On my researches on the internet I keep reading about how landlords are selling up to avoid licensing. But is this really the case? When speaking this afternoon to Dave Princeps, Operations Manager at Camden Environmental Heath Section and Chair of the London Landlord Accreditation Scheme, I asked him what he thought about it.

"Its quite true" he told me. "Some landlords seem to be terrified of the licensing scheme and are selling their properties at a loss to avoid licensing. Some other landlords are making quite a killing, buying up these properties. Seems silly to me".

Silly indeed. As he pointed out, the cost of licensing (which even with the most expensive local authority works out at less than £1 per tenant per week) is probably far less than the losses which some of these landlords are taking on their properties, as they rush lemming like to sell them.

Mind you, I forgot to ask him about the washbasin problem. Schedule 3 of the Licensing and Management of Houses in Multiple Occupation and Other Houses (Miscellaneous Provisions) (England) Regulations 2006 (section 2.2) provides for every unit of living accommodation of an HMO where there are five or more occupiers, to contain a wash hand basin. This apparently is causing some problems, as in many cases it would prove difficult and expensive to put a wash hand basin in every room as appears to be being required in the statute. Different authorities apparently are taking different attitudes to this. Some are taking a strict view, others less so.

So perhaps this is another reason why so many HMO landlords are throwing in the towel. Still maybe the purchasers of their properties will have made a sufficient profit on the deal with to enable them to get this work done should it prove necessary.

It is to be hoped however that the properties do not go out of letting altogether. As I mentioned in my earlier post accommodation is badly needed, HMO accommodation in particular.

Doing the Q&A

I did my Q&A this morning. This is something I have been doing for years – ever since my very first Landlord-Law site, I have (more or less every 14 days) answered ten questions emailed to me by readers and put them online.

It is surprising how consistent the types of questions are. Some of the most common topics are (in no particular order)

• Tenants complaining about landlords coming into their property uninvited
• Tenants complaining about disrepair not knowing what to do about it
• Tenants whose landlords have not complied with the gas regulations
• Tenants complaining about landlords unreasonably withholding the damage deposit
• Tenants wanting to terminate tenancies before the end of their fixed term
• Landlords asking what they should do if tenants don’t leave after being served possession notices
• Landlords thinking that they can evict tenants without going to court (yes some landlords do still believe this)
• Landlords with technical queries about possession notices and possession claims
• Landlords with problems with their letting agents
• Tenants upset because landlords have sold the property to a less sympathetic landlord
• Tenants complaining about landlords who promise to do work to a property before it is let and then fail to do it
• Landlords who unexpectedly need the property for their own use wanting the tenants to move out early
• Problems about notice periods
  

There are some things I find myself saying again and again. For example it is amazing how often I find myself recommending the tenant consult the advice services of their local authority. Local authorities regulatory powers are so much wider now and they have the potential to assist tenants in many ways. In particular in unlawful eviction and harassment matters, and cases of disrepair. It is also surprising how few people seem to realise that (1) you do not need a written tenancy agreement to create a tenancy and (2) tenancies continue after the expiry of the fixed term (s5HA 1988).

The most worrying questions are those from tenants whose landlords are either threatening immediate eviction or who refuse to carry out what sound (from what the tenants have written) like essential repairs. I always try to answer the most serious ones if I can.

For some situations though there is not really a helpful answer. I always feel very sorry for tenants who find that their landlords mortgage company is going to evict them because the landlord has not paid his mortgage. I also cannot really help neighbours of noisy tenants.

For many problems there is a stock solution – speak to your Local Authority housing advisor (harassment, disrepair), speak to Trading Standards (unfair contract terms, cowboy letting agents), report to the Heath and Safety Executive (gas regulation problems) but I sometimes wonder how helpful these organisations actually are. No doubt also they vary in helpfulness across the country.

Still I enjoy doing the Q&A and it seems that people enjoy reading them. And you do sometimes get some unusual and interesting questions (perhaps one of my favorites was the person who hoped that he could get out of his tenancy because of the calling of the Iraqi war!). It is also nice to think that that the answers are of help to people. And hopefully having a regularly changing site will also help my google ratings!

My office

Those who read my earlier post on my office re-decoration will no doubt be delighted to learn that it is now all over. The weekend-and-two-days-without-my-office was as ghastly as I thought it would be, but the decorating and carpet bit at least went as planned. However there was a bit of a delay with the blinds which had to be altered, which left me feeling as if I were sitting in a goldfish bowl when working with the lights on (my desk is in the bay window), plus my laptop refused to re-connect to the network (or was it that the network refused to connect to the laptop?) without further help from my expensive IT people.

The two final pieces fell into place today - the new office chairs arrived (weeks late because the company had been let down by the company providing the fabric we had chosen), as did my new radio controlled clock. This will self adjust (from a signal from Rugby apparently) and always be right, even after the clocks go back. (There have been a few years when some of our clocks have been wrong for a whole six months because no-one could be bothered to move them back or forward. Sometimes overcoming apathy is just too much effort.)

I can't believe how wonderful my office is, so spacious and light and airy. All I have to do now is pay for it ...

Luckless landlord meets Nearly Legal in court

There is interesting post on the Nearly Legal web-site recently on how a tenant (with the help of Nearly Legal) fought back against a nightmare landlord. None of my landlords of course would dream of behaving like that, but there is always one. Or three. Or more.

Its nice to see that at least some tenants are able to get decent legal aid help and do something about injustice. I think Nearly Legal ought to go for damages for unlawful eviction, if only to punish the landlord and replenish the legal aid fund. But we need to be told how much they get ...

Blawg review #78

Congratulations to Justin Patten for an excellent overview of the blawgosphere (ghastly word) in his Blawg Review. If you want to find out who is blogging on legal matters, read this.

Oh, and thanks for the mention!

Legal aid in crisis - the Observer

As I have been banging on about legal aid a bit recently, feeling rather as if I were banging my head against a brick wall, I was delighted to see a report in the Observer today on Legal Aid in Crisis. Only in the business supplement of course where no-one will see it, but at least they have recognised the problem.

The trouble is, when most people think about legal aid funding cuts they tend to think this is good as it will mean less bloated fat cat lawyers getting too much money, whereas in fact what it actually means is ordinary people not being able to get help at a time when they desperately need it. No aspiring fat cat lawyer will go anywhere near legal aid work anyway - not enough money in it!

Adnams Eco Brewery

Congratulations to Admans brewery in Southwold on their new eco distribution centre, now one of the UKs largest eco friendly industrial buildings (reported here by the BBC). It is built in a disused gravel pit and boasts the largest green sedum roof in the country, as well as solar water heaters and lime/hemp walls.

The green roof will cut down pollutants and provide excellent insulation, cutting down on refrigeration and heating costs, as will the walls made of lime mortar, hemp and quarry waste. The roof also provides a vast rainwater catchment area, with the water being used for washing vehicles and flushing toilets.

The building cost some 15% more than a traditional building but Adnams hope to make energy savings over the next 10 years of at least £500,000. I am sure that they will find other benefits as well. A recent report (the green value report which you will find linked from here) found that environmentally friendly buildings provide healthier places to live and more productive places to work, can command higher rents and prices, attract tenants more quickly, reduce tenant turnover and cost less to operate and maintain.

Adnams MD says that the building has created a huge amount of interest and that he is doing talks to other businesses about it. Let us hope that this results in a few more being built.

One lawyer for the rich …

Following on from my post yesterday, it occurs to me that if the current trend continues, there will eventually be no legal aid solicitors left in private practice. Those unable to afford private legal fees will then have no alternative but to use the Law Centres and legal charities such as the Citizens Advice Bureau and Shelter. In many parts of the country, the ‘legal aid deserts’, this is already a reality,

Although I have the greatest admiration for Law Centres and the legal charities, the fact is that there will be different lawyers acting for the rich and for the poor. Inevitably the solicitors and caseworkers working for the law centres and legal charities will be paid less than those in private practice, and this will mean that most of the highflyers will be snapped up by the city firms and other large private practices.

With all its faults, under the old system, at least those eligible for legal aid could chose almost any solicitors firm, and the same solicitor could have a private fee paying and a legal aid caseload (and many did). Now a two tier system is developing. Although the solicitors in the ‘social’ sector may be (and probably will be) very good, I am unhappy about the idea of there being a divide in this way.

It is another symptom of the widening rift between those who can afford to pay for private services (schooling, health care, etc) and those who cannot. It is a very worrying trend.

It is ironic that this has come to pass under a labour government.

Legal aid again

I can remember, quite a long time ago, it could have been as much as 10 years, I went to a presentation by the Legal Aid Board (as it was then). I can’t remember why or what it was about, but what I do remember is a tirade which one of the speakers suddenly got up and gave against solicitors. “You have all had it soft” he said (or words to that effect), waving his finger at us, "there are going to be changes and you lot are going to have to get used to it." Well we didn’t actually, what happened was that we all stopped doing legal aid.

But that is just typical of the attitude that we all get from the (as it now is) Legal Services Commission. With a few honourable exceptions. they seem to think that we are a useless overqualified mercenary lot who need teaching a lesson.

This attitude has been prevalent for years, during which pay has been frozen, administration has been hiked up to frightening proportions, and most sensible lawyers have left for more remunerative work elsewhere. The only ones still doing legal aid are those with a strong pubic service ethic who believe in working for the community. But maybe even they won’t be around for long.

A new independent report shows that hundreds of legal aid firms are likely to be forced out of business as if the new reforms come in, legal aid work is not only going to be unprofitable, it will be loss making. So effectively solicitors will have to pay to do it! Even the most public spirited solicitor is likely to baulk at that one.

So the losers will be, not the solicitors – they are educated and have a good qualification, they are not going to suffer for long - but those who need their services. Where will they go for legal help when the last legal aid firm has gone bankrupt and its partners have taken jobs elsewhere? Who will fight for their rights? Only the law centres and the charities will be left. I wish them well.

Five days of hell

This weekend my office is going to be re-decorated.

Put simply like that it doesn’t sound very momentous. Just a short simple sentance. But it has been and will be a major operation. It has had to be planned like a military campaign. Nothing has been done to my room for years and years so it has a huge amount of stuff in it, as like all lawyers I tend to hang on to things (particularly paperwork) in case I need it later.

Already seven bin bags have gone to the tip. Old magazines. Pre Woolf pleadings precedents. Out of date telephone directories. Off they all went. Six plastic bags of out of date legal text books and old review copies of landlord and tenant books have gone to the charity shop down the road. And still there is more. Three more bin bags have been filled. And I haven’t done the bottom shelf yet, or the space under the spare desk. Or the space under my desk.

But the space under my desk will be done the very last of all, because that is where my computer lives. And it will have to be dismantled!! I will have to be without my computer for five whole days!!! How will I survive?? Of course the laptop will help (I am typing on the laptop now) but I suspect that the broadband will have to go off so I will be without internet access. A worrying thought.

So Friday is clearing and cleaning, the weekend and Monday will be painting and decorating, and Tuesday will be getting the new carpet laid, the blinds put up, the new light fitting fixed and (thank goodness) my computer put back together. And Wednesday will (hopefully) be back to work as usual.

And then my room will be lovely! But the period in between will be hell!

Thank you Richard Susskind

I was thrilled and honoured today when I opened the Times legal supplement, to see that Richard Susskind had written about my web-site www.landlordlaw.co.uk and this blog in his regular column in the Times, available here on the internet.

For those who have not heard of him, Richard Susskind is an academic and expert on legal technology. He regularly advises national governments and large legal firms, and has been IT Adviser to the Lord Chief Justice of England since 1998.

He is also an author and has written widely on legal IT. His book Transforming the Law was an enormous inspiration to me at the time I was setting up my online service Landlord-Law in 2001. To find someone of Richard’s stature writing about the very same thing I was contemplating, gave me courage and underlined my belief in what I was doing.

One idea he is particularly well known for is "The Grid", a model explaining the relationships between various fundamental concepts, including knowledge management, information systems, information technology and e-commerce (you can download a power point presentation on the grid here). Landlord-Law sits squarely in the top right hand corner of the grid, possibly a rather lonely position at present, but one which will no doubt become more crowded as time goes by.

Richard is a true visionary and I am sure that most if not all of his predictions will come to pass, if not now, at least at some stage in the future. With the enormous changes brought about by the internet at the start of this new twenty-first century, it is inevitable that the provision of legal services will also have to change. In its small way, my online service Landlord-Law is following one of the paths predicted by Richard, and showing that it is possible to succeed in a new method of legal delivery (even if you are a sole practitioner!).

More problems with HMO licensing

It looks as if the additional administration associated with HMOs is putting landlords off landlording. A survey by RICS, reported here finds that landlords are either selling up or are just letting to three or less people, in order to avoid licensing.

Which would mean that although licensing is cutting down on rogue landlords, this is at the expense of having less properties available for rent. The groups most affected are students, particularly in London, and immigrants, who make up a large percentage of the HMO market.

There are several knock on effects. One will probably be that the trend for students to stay at home (started by the loss of grant income and imposition of course fees) will increase. Another is that there will be even more pressure on local authorities to find accommodation for those vulnerable members of society in priority need.

Many landlords are also deeply angry at the lack of consistency in the way local authorities are treating HMO licensing, particularly the enormous variation in the fees (for example see my HMO license fee list), and the standards imposed, recently commented on in an article in the Observer. For example the variation in the interpretation of the regulations which apparently require larger HMOs to have a wash hand basin in every unit of living accommodation. And indeed the fact that this requirement, which if interpreted strictly will result in enormous expense being incurred by many landlords for no apparent good reason, is being imposed in the first place.

It is unfortunate that these well meaning regulations, may turn out to have a negative effect, in that much needed accommodation will no longer be available to those who most need it.

Killer landlord

Be careful who you lodge with! Lodging with tunisian immigrant Abder-rahmen Dhaou cost Kynan Eldridge his life. The landlord stabbed him after an altercation about some rent believed to be as little as £50.

Much to Mr Eldridge's family's distress Dhaou only got a sentance of three years, but the Judge recommended that he be deported at the end of his sentance.

You can read more about it here. Mind you I suspect killer landlords are rare, but it still pays to be very careful who you share lodgings with.

Eco housing in Fenland

I was pleased to see a report on the internet recently saying that over 100 environmentally friendly houses are to be built in Fenland.

Not only that, but the builders will be trialling different building methods so scientists can measure the environmental impact of each construction method used and the energy efficiency of each building. This information will then be used to help other developers reduce the impact of their work on the environment.

Would that there were more initiatives like this!

Landlords – reasons to be cheerful

An interesting article in the Observer this week, discusses the upward trend in tenant demand for rented property. To summarise these comprise the following:

Immigration. This is where the biggest demand is – the government Actuaries Department estimates the average annual net immigration in coming years will be 145,000 a year, the Observer suggest the figure may be considerably higher. As most immigrants will be unable to buy their own property and are ineligible for social housing, their only option is renting in the private sector. Apparently demand from immigrants could boost the private rented sector by 55,000 homes every year.

A fall in the number of first time buyers. It seems the average age of the first time buyer is now 34 – before this most young professionals prefer to have the flexibility of rented property, plus many of them are paying off student loans and cannot afford to buy anyway. Also people are choosing to marry and start families later.

Overall this has resulted in a huge increase in the number of households. A large part of this is the demand from immigrants, but there is also more demand than formerly from the indigenous population.

The government is not willing to fund the building of more social housing, or help finance owner occupiers by re-introducing MIRAS. So there is a real need for private landlords to meet the growing demand from tenants.

It is not surprising therefore that a recent report in The Times states that the buy to let industry is now one of the UK’s ten fastest-growing industries, alongside computer services and management consultancy, and produced a £45 billion increase in income between 1992 and 2004, a rise of 120 per cent.

All good news for landlords.

Respect

I can't help feeling that the use of the word 'respect' by the government is going a little too far.

For example I learn from the most recent issue of LAG magazine that there is not only a 'Respect committee' on the cabinet, but also a 'Respect Team', and a 'Respect Squad' (ten senior practitioners who can be 'called in' to help local agencies tackle anti social behaviour). When I first read this I did wonder if LAG were having us on, but sadly it appears not.

By the way, the respect boys are getting tough - plans have been announced to cut housing benefit for households evicted for anti social behviour who refuse to engage in rehabilitation. Pwhah!

That happened in June. On 17 August The Respect Standard for Housing Management was launched, announced here, and landlords can sign up to it here. I wonder how many have.

There is even a 'Respect' website. I suppose it is an attempt to make contact with the disaffected, which ought to be a good thing, but somehow everything this government does is tainted by spin, and nobody really believes anything any more.

But I still love the song by Aretha Franklin. Listen to Aretha here, performed by Pomme and Kelly. Respect!

Not just the policemen

Property investors get younger and younger. Now 17 year old Luke Clarke is on the brink of what looks almost certain to be a sucessful property investment career, as he prepares to complete on his first property purchase at the age of 18 - see Rosie Millard's Tales of a landlady column in The Times on August 6th.

Although if you ask me, young Clarke probably has a lot to thank his letting agent step dad, Terry Lucking (who runs the Peterborough branch of Belvoir Lettings), for. Terry not only gave him a job and the opportunity to learn the business and earn his deposit, he also bought the property on his behalf so he can convey it to Luke on his birthday. Not all step dads are bad.

But there is no doubt that in turn Luke has been, is, and will undoubtedly be an enormous asset to the Belvoir letting business. Well done Luke, and may this property be the first of many!

Pigeon problems

In some towns pigeons are such a problem that feeding them is punishable by eviction from your home! So says this report from the Norwich Evening News. ASBOs are also threatened against those anti-social tenants who persist in feeding the birds. Indeed apparently in Bristol, 63-year-old Graham Branfield was given an indefinite anti social behaviour order for feeding birds in his back garden and now faces up to five years in prison if he breaches the order by feeding pigeons or any other animals.

However I very much doubt whether any tenants will actually be evicted, plus any possession order made on this basis would almost certainly be subject to appeal. Although the reported case in the Law Reports would make very interesting reading, and the tenant would achieve lasting fame by having his case cited in almost all property law text books.

New CLS ploy to reduce legal aid budget

A report in the Observer indicates that the Community Legal Service's telephone advice service may have a more sinister objective than just to help people solve their legal problems on the phone.

The service is one whereby callers who qualify for legal aid can call a national helpline for up to half an hours free telephone advice. Sounds good. But the Ob article reports that some people, among them Roger Smith, director of the human rights group Justice, who took part in a 'mystery shopper' exercise for a recent issue of Independent Lawyer magazine, are concerned that the CLS advisers seem reluctant to refer callers on for face-to-face help.

Over the last 12 months, 73,500 problems were dealt with by the helpline, but there was a referral rate of only 13%. This seems suspiciously low. Although the CLS report customer 'satisfaction ratings' of 93 per cent of callers happy with the telephone service, callers whose reason for ringing is that they don't know the answer to their problem are not really the best people to judge whether they have been properly advised or not.

'It isn't possible to give issue-specific advice to tenants without reviewing paperwork,' the Observer quotes from Pierce Glynn partner Steven Pierce, another solicitor who took part in the mystery shopper exercise. 'OK, you can give accurate general advice, but you can't determine whether or not somebody has a defence by talking on a phone.' Well I would certainly agree with that.

Telephone advice can be great, but it can also be dangerous. For example the caller may only have a vague idea of the paperwork involved and may give a wholly incorrect description of it, resulting in incorrect advice being given. In a situation where someone is at risk of losing their home, I would always recommend getting advice on the paperwork as this is an area where paperwork is critical. Lawyers who know what they are doing can usually see at a glance what the true situation is from the papers, whereas the client, who knows nothing of these matters, in a telephone call may not even mention the most critical items, and instead concentrate on telling you something which is actually irrelevant.

Notwithstanding this, the CLS expects to increase spending on the service from £15m to £25m next year and £28m in 2008. However Russell Conway, a member of the Law Society's access to justice committee, who also took part in the test, and who described the referral rate of 13 per cent as 'bizarre' commented 'There are only so many issues that can be resolved over the phone. If consumers are being put off taking proper legal steps, it does more harm than good.' But giving advice by telephone is much cheaper than paying for the client to consult a solicitor for face to face advice.

John Sirodcar, the head of direct services at the Legal Services Commission, denied (says the Observer)that advisers were reluctant to refer clients on to face-to-face services where appropriate. He also said that he had not received any client details. 'Give me the evidence and I will check it out,' he added.

But how will the clients know that they should have been referred on? As mentioned above the whole reason for their call in the first place is that they are ignorant of the law. They may never find out that the advice was wrong or misconceived, in which case they will never complain. Of course this could be said about all legal services, however given the full information most lawyers will come to the correct conclusion. The problem with the telephone advice service is that the lawyers advice may be based on an incomplete picture.

Failure to refer on (and thus save money) and the trumpeting of meaningless 'satisfaction surveys' are some of the problems of a system driven by cost cutting and statistics.

More on rogue landlord Dickens

My anonymous correspondent has sent me a further cutting in the story of ASBO landlord Steven Dickens. You can see my previous post here. It seems that the charming Mr Dickens will be facing fraud charges totaling some £7 million. You can read about it in the North Wales Pioneer - do a search on Steven Dickens - the entry is dated 1 August 2006.

However I should assure readers that very few landlords behave in this way. Although it is comforting to know that dishonest landlords are now being prosecuted and brought to book. It is a pity that this did not happen more in the past. Bad landlords are bad news for good landlords as they taint peoples' view of landlords in general.

Meanwhile it will be interesting to see what happens during Mr Dickens trial, whether he gets convicted, and if so, what his sentence will be.

A rant against government stupidity

It has now been officially confirmed that the introduction of the tenancy deposit scheme has been put back to April 2007. One of the reasons apparently is that during consultation the landlords organizations complained that the way the scheme was set up, if the tenant did a runner leaving rent arrears, the scheme would not release the deposit to the landlord who would have to go to court to get a CCJ first!

I sometimes wonder what the people in charge of things nowadays use for brains. Surely it must have been obvious that this is unfair? Why was it necessary for the landlords organisations to have to point this out?

Another backtrack that has taken place recently is the decision to remove the home condition reports from HIPS (or at least not make them mandatory). Conveyancing is not my subject but colleagues who specialize in this work have been saying for months that the system is misconceived, was designed to solve a problem that did not really exist, and that it would probably prove to be unworkable. Now the government are looking silly. Why don’t they listen to advice?

Another own goal is their attempt to destroy the legal profession by threatening their independence, which as reported in The Times today is the subject of severe criticism by a parliamentary committee. Indeed the new President of the Law Society has said that the new wide and "unnecessary" powers taken by the Lord Chancellor will allow him to intervene in law firms - or even dictate that "every solicitor should have a blue-screen saver", if he wanted. Already foreign bars, for example Germany, have warned that if other proposed ‘reforms’ to allow firms to be owned by businesses go ahead they will not be willing to deal with them. The legal profession, particularly in the city, brings in huge sums to this country and is widely respected – why should the government wish to threaten this? What good will it do? Apart from removing the possibility that a vigorous legal profession might undermine half baked government initiatives, that is.

One reason for all of the above may be the desire to appease the consumers organisations (who support all these initiatives) at all costs, and accepting what they say without question. I have no quarrel with ensuring a fair deal for consumers, but the consumer organisations do appear to be unnecessarily skewed against landlords and the legal profession. But it will be dangerous to undermine either as this country needs landlords (to house those who cannot afford to buy) and an independent legal profession.

An uneven playing field for landlords

The new HMO licensing regulations are now effective and the three month 'grace period' has now ended. Landlords who have failed to obtain a license face fines of up to £20,000, plus risk tenants applying for rent repayment orders while being unable to evict them via the section 21 procedure. But have the government played fair with landlords?

In a recent press release the British Property Federation accused government of deliberately making the regime more complex by allowing local discretion as opposed to following a standardised approach across the country.

For example there is a huge variation in license fees, which run from under £100 to over £1,000 per property (for example see the HMO license fee list I am developing). This variation is massively unfair on the landlords in the expensive boroughs, particularly those with a large portfolio, who will see their colleagues with similar properties paying a fraction of the fees they are having to pay. Tenants will suffer also as rents will no doubt rise to cover this additional expense. It appears that the governing legislation (the Housing Act 2004) allows capping but for reasons best known to themselves government preferred to allow the current uneven playing field.

The BPA also criticise the government for its delay in its preparations which meant that local authorities were not up to speed in April when the regulations first came in.

Putting audio files on Landlord-Law

I think it was an article in the excellent Internet Newsletter, from Delia Venables which first gave me the idea to put sound files on Landlord-Law. I was also inspired by the podcasts on the i-legal.info site from solicitors Fisher Jones Greenwood, plus of course the pioneering work done by Justin Patten (although irritatingly I never seem to be able to access his blog site).

But would these solutions be right for Landlord-Law? How could I best use sound files to help members and prospective members? One obvious use (it seemed to me) was to provide answers to the questions which people thinking of joining often ring me up to ask. Explanatory pods (as I originally called them) scattered around the site with help and information. Perhaps people would be more likely to listen to these, than to read the information which is already there and which the people who ring me up (irritatingly) never seem to have looked at. Plus, maybe it would make them more likely to want to join. (!!)

What about our members? How could sound files help them? Well I know that many people do not like reading. This seems strange to me as I seem to have spent most of my life reading one thing or another, and can’t imagine not reading, but I am told that this is the case. And, some of the Landlord-Law articles are a bit long. Perhaps it would help the non readers if they could listen to them instead. Plus some people with busy lives do not have time for much reading. It might be helpful for them if they could download sound files and listen to them on the move.

But how to do it? My experience is only with word files. I needed to learn about sound. I am enormously indebted here to Claire Sandbrook, the CEO of Shergroup who very kindly invited me to a brilliant training day being done for her company by Karen Ainley of Mosaic Publicity. This gave me that initial injection of information and confidence which I needed to start. I bought the equipment recommended by Karen (basically a Marantz PMD 660 solid state recorder and mike), three books on podcasting (reading again!), and got going.

It is actually much more work than you would think doing sound files. First you have to write the scripts (I tried doing it 'off the cuff' but kept forgetting what I needed to say). Then you have to record it. This is also harder than you would think, plus you have to find somewhere to record where there is no background noise (my office was no good – too much traffic outside). Then you have to edit the sound file, and cut out all the coughs, clicks, sniffs and gurgles that always creep in and sound ghastly, as well as all the places where you get it wrong!. Then you listen to it and decide that it is not good enough and needs to be done again ...

So I had sound files. Professional sound engineers will probably wince if they listen to them, but they are at least fairly clear and you can hear what I am saying. (And I will learn more and get better over time!) Gill, my web-designer had once again come up trumps with some fabulous new icons, and sorted out the site so it could take mp3 files. By this time I had decided to call the files 'audios'. 'Pods' sounded silly, and the files are not podcasts in the normal sense.

So there you have it. We have audio. I hope you enjoy them and do not get too fed up with the sound of my voice. Why not go to the Landlord-Law site and have a listen now?

South Tynside Council gets tough on rogue landlord

When a South Tynside landlord tried to evict his tenants rather than get an HMO license he was asking for trouble. And he got it.

When one of his tenants applied for re-housing the Council realised his landlord was acting in breach of the law. The Homelessness Team alerted the Environmental Health Service who tried to contact the landlord. However as this proved impossible, they swiftly took control of the house under an Interim Management Order - introduced under the new Housing Act 2004. This allows them to manage the property until the problems have been resolved, after which it is handed back to the owner.

South Tynside believe that they are the first authority to use these powers. Good for them! I bet they won't be the last though.

Social housing - a bad thing?

A recent report published by the Smith Institute (a 'think tank') covered in an article in The Times today (4 July) indicates that research has shown that social housing is a bad thing and that it is sustaining rather than reducing dependency and poverty.

"A social housing tenancy should no longer be regarded as a positive outcome", the report says, "because there is scant evidence that it improves a person’s life chances."

This may well be the case, but I can't help wondering whether this is an attempt to justify in retrospect the selling off of so much of our housing stock under Mrs Thatcher’s 'right to buy'. There is certainly still a huge demand for social housing, which is why Local Authorities are often unable to re-house homeless families until the bailiff is at the door.

The massive lack of social housing is also why so many local authorities are courting private landlords, desperately hoping that they will agree to lease them some of their properties, so they will have somewhere to put all these homeless families which they are obliged to house under their statutory re-housing duties.

It is very difficult for Local Authorities, as the (subsidised) price obtained for a council house sale is not nearly enough to build or buy a replacement. Deciding that social housing is a bad idea anyway and should be phased out is certainly a more convenient answer.