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.