Malcolm reversed

Landlords the length and breadth of the country will (or should) be celebrating the House of Lords decision in the leading case of Lewisham v. Malcolm, (discussed by me previously here) and the reversal of the previous Court of Appeal decision. This denied Lewisham a possession order on the basis that Mr Malcolm’s subletting of his flat (which in normal cases would have entitled Lewisham to an order for possession without question) was as a result of his disability (schizophrenia), and that their claim for possession was therefore discriminatory.

This raised the worrying (for landlords) possibility of disabled tenants being unevictable, no matter how serious their rent arrears (for example). Or, as Mr Bernstein found, unevitctable under the section 21 procedure, if they are disabled, even if the landlord did not know this.

However it now looks as if these fears are groundless (other than for poor old Mr Bernstein who should have had his possession order months ago) and possession orders will in future only be denied to landlords in cases of obvious discrimination.

Lawyers are less happy with the decision, which they say messes up established employment law principles.

The Malcolm decision is a very long one and although I have tried to read it, it is past 11.00pm (at which time I start to fade ...) and it is difficult to stop my eyes from glazing over. No doubt an authoritative analysis will be posted in due course by Nearly Legal. So I will leave it to him, and go to bed.

Councils get tough on HMO regulation evaders

I have just seen two reports of landlords breaching the HMO regulations being fined.

In Redditch, Nadeem Asghar, (23), pleaded guilty to operating a house in multiple occupation and was fined £2,000 and ordered to pay £1,071 costs.

In Loughborough Mohammed Tayaib Ali Chowdhury (age not given in the report) was fined a swinging £10,000 and £1,015 costs. His property, a three-story Victorian terrace in Toothill Road, Loughborough, was occupied as an HMO by nine adults and two children, without a license.

There seems quite a gap between the two awards, so either the Loughborough Magistrates are considerably harsher than those in Redditch, or there is something we have not been told.

Still, defaulting HMO landlords beware – it could be you next!

More tenants evicted by landlords mortgagees

I have been contacted by another tenant today, who is being evicted by her landlords mortgage company. Her situation is not quite as bad as that of my clients in my previous post, as no order for possession has been made yet (the hearing is in July). However she was not at all happy to receive the notice of proceedings from the mortgagees solicitors two months into an eighteen month fixed term! Particularly as she had just paid to have broadband connected.

Once again I question the role of the letting agents here. In this case the tenant has found out that the landlord has probably been in arrears of rent for quite a long period, it could even be a year. As well as this it seems that the landlord failed to obtain consent for the letting from his head lessor. If a tenant can find these things out, why can’t the agent?

Is it right for a letting agent to be able to let a property which is obviously vulnerable to repossession, and after it is let (and their commission paid – taken from the tenants rent of course), not be liable in any way when the property is repossessed? Should they not be obliged to carry out at least some rudimentary checking?

The agents in this particular case are a large high profile London firm of estate and letting agents. When a tenant is renting a property from a professional agency such as this, they do tend to assume that they will at least be able to live in the property without being evicted two months into the term!

It is arguable that in such a situation, particularly as it is a business/consumer situation, there should be some sort of tortuous liability on the agent to ensure that the properties on their list are not vulnerable to repossession, at least during the initial fixed term.

Incidentally, the Civil Justice Council has recently carried out a consultation on a proposed new mortgage repossession pre action protocol (the consultation period finished on 23 May) but this does not appear to consider the situation of innocent tenants.

Stand your ground on damage deposit claims

In my last post I talked about the case of my poor clients, evicted by their landlords’ mortgagee. In fact the situation was worse that I let on, as not only were they evicted, they also didn’t get their deposit back!

My advice to them was (inter alia) to threaten the agents with an application under the Tenancy Deposit Protection Scheme regulations for the return of the deposit and three times the deposit sum ‘fine’ provided for under the regs. The deposit after all had been paid to the agents. In my view the fact that they had passed it on to the landlord (which turned out to be a dodgy company - almost certainly without assets) did not excuse them from their responsibility to protect the deposit. Otherwise this would be driving the proverbial coach and horses through the regulations. My letting agent client had told me that they would never pass a deposit on to a landlord unless they were 100% certain that it was going to be protected.

Initially the agents tried the brush off – “nothing to do with us, we just found the tenants, you need to claim the deposit from the landlord”. My client then spoke to the Deposit Protection Service, who told him that the agents were right, and that they could not claim the deposit from them.

Thankfully, although initially knocked back by this, my client decided to send a stiff letter to the agents, threatening court proceedings, and claiming the deposit, the 3 x fine, all his expenses (including an item I had privately told him was not really recoverable), and substantial compensation. The agents consulted their solicitors and their insurers, and, to my clients surprise and delight, agreed to everything except the compensation!

So a happy ending and champagne all round! But what a good thing my client took no notice of the DPS and decided to send the letter anyway. Otherwise they would now be several thousand pounds poorer.

Agents letting property subject to a re-possession order

Note - the Landlord Law Blog has now moved to www.landlordlawblog.co.uk.

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There is quite a lot of discussion about tenants evicted unfairly by landlords in retaliation for something that they have done, such as complain about repairs. However there is another type of unfair eviction where tenants do not even get the benefit of the two months notice under section 21 which tenants receive in a retaliatory eviction. I am talking about tenants who get evicted by the landlords mortgage company when the landlord fails to meet his mortgage payments.

I was consulted by tenants on one of these cases recently. They had rented what they believed to be their dream home, only to find two months later, the bailiffs at the door. It was a complete surprise to them because the possession order had been obtained before the property had been let to them!

Yes, amazing though it seems, the possession order was made several weeks before the tenancy was granted, and the date for possession in the order had actually expired the day before my clients tenancy started (by the way they know I writing this and have given their consent). Therefore the notice which mortgagees are required to serve on occupiers of properties did not help them, as it had been served over six months ago!

The property was rented via an agency and the question comes to mind – what is the agents obligation here? Under agency law an agent is generally not liable for the acts or omissions of its principal. However what if the property they are presenting to the public as a suitable home, is one which is vulnerable to repossession from the moment the ink dries on the tenancy agreement?

I had a word with one of my letting agent clients about the sort of checks that are generally done in the business against their landlord clients and the properties they take on. It seems that the answer is ‘not much’ Apparently landlords are sometimes asked to sign a form saying that they are authorised to let the property and that there are no legal problems or other problems with it. Well that’s not much good is it? A dishonest landlord is going to sign that without a qualm.

I can’t help feeling that there should be some sort of obligation on agents to check this sort of thing. After all in this case the agent was offering to let through its business, a property which had a substantial defect – i.e. it was vulnerable to repossession at any moment. It seems wrong for the agent to be able to pocket its commission (taken from my clients rent) and then say “sorry gov, nothing to do with me”. Which is in effect what they are doing.

What do other people think?

Inside track bubble bursts

I was amused to read that Inside Track, the company that charged thousands of pounds for courses promising to teach people how to be property millionaires, has now itself gone into administration.

I am not a property investor myself, neither am I a millionaire (I wish!) but I would have thought that if people want to make money from property, something along the following lines would be necessary:

• To be clever (particularly to understand numbers and finance) and to have a large chunk of common sense
  
• To read around the subject (for example some of the books here) and attend talks and lectures (no need to spend thousands, for example there are free talks at property events such as the Landlord and Buy to Let Shows, and David Lawrenson runs modestly priced property seminars in London)
  
• To study the property market very, very carefully in a specific area of the country, ideally not too far from where you live, so you know it really well and can buy sensibly
  
• Capital

I suspect that good people skills and contacts in the building industry would also be important.

Belief in getting easy money by attending an overpriced course pumped up by extravagant claims, would, I suspect be a negative factor.

The problem of landlord regulation

A recent article in Inside Housing looks at how landlords are using the governments review of the private rented sector to call for a review of the HMO licensing system, which they say is not working. One organisation is asking for it to be done away with altogether, allowing landlords to ‘self regulate’.

The main criticism of the HMO licensing scheme is the way the license fees vary across the country, with some authorities charging over £1,500 per property and others charging under £200. I have to say I have a lot of sympathy with landlords complaints here, our own Landlord-Law list of licensing fees shows a very wide variation. This cannot be right.

However in my opinion one of the best chances of dealing with poor conditions in properties and rogue landlords should be via the local authorities and the licensing scheme. The problem is though that in many cases they are not using their powers properly, most likely because of lack of resources. The Inside Housing article mentions a "substantial fine slapped on a Liverpool landlord last month" and this is quoted as showing that the regime is working. I am really pleased that at least one bad landlord has got his comeuppance under the regs, but suspect that there are many others slipping through the net. The fact that this item is newsworthy (when if the councils were doing their job, such orders would be common practice) is telling in itself.

Which is a pity, as if the local authority powers, which they already hold, were being used as they should be, then this would do a lot to solve the problems of substandard housing. It really needs an outside body to enforce standards, it is unfair to expect tenants to have to do this themselves. Not only because they are then at risk of retaliatory eviction under section 21, but also because bringing a legal action is a stressful, and (unless legal aid is available, which often it is not) expensive process which many tenants do not want to undertake.

Furthermore, why should they have to? Under the Housing Act 2004, poor standards are technically a crime and local authorities are the organisation charged with enforcement. We do not expect victims of burglaries to hunt down and prosecute the thieves. Why should victims of substandard housing have to sue their landlords in order to obtain the decent standards they are entitled to under the law? The situations are not wholly parallel, I agree, but it is a valid point of view.

As for the suggestion that landlords should regulate themselves, this is laughable. I wholly agree that many, probably a majority, of landlords are law abiding and provide decent properties which not only comply with the standards but surpass them. However how are these landlords, or indeed the landlords associations, going to do anything about the non compliant landlords? They may not approve of them, but that isn’t going to do any good! The only way that landlords could self regulate would be if membership of a landlords or similar association were made mandatory and the associations given powers to act against members who breach their standards. This is one of the options being looked at by the Law Commission in their responsible renting project. However many landlords associations do not want this role.

My preference would be for regulation of non complaint landlords to be done by an outside body, the most appropriate being the Local Authorities, as they already have powers in this respect. The main reason why this is not being done properly already, is a lack of resources. Which means under funding by the government. Over to you, Gordon.

Credit crunch problems

There is a very interesting, if worrying, article on the Guardian site here about the credit crunch and the effect it is having on housing. I was shocked to read that mortgage repossessions are likely to go up to 45,000, from 8,000 in 2004.

The article also makes other telling points, such as for example the income of support charities is likely to go down as few people can afford to donate, and the value of their investments plummet.

Bad news for us all.

The Rent Arrears Action Plan

In view of the current financial situation, I have added a new members only service to my Landlord-Law site, a Rent Arrears Action Plan. This is in five parts (the first part being preliminary information) and contains detailed guidance to landlords on what they should do from the moment their tenant first falls into arrears, up to considering court action. It contains precedent letters which can be printed off and used, the possession notices, and checklists, so landlords can keep a record of what they have done.

It is important that rent arrears are dealt with promptly, not only for the landlord but also for the tenant. If rent arrears are allowed to build up (and I have seen some horrendous rent arrears in my time) then they will get to such a state that the tenant will never be able to pay them off. Whereas if the tenant starts dealing with them at an early stage, it may be possible for an installment plan to be arranged, which will allow the tenant to stay in the property. The landlord will then not be faced with the expensive of court proceedings, a large rent arrears bill, and all the bother of having to find a new tenant. Often when people fall into debt they will pay the person or company which is shouting the loudest. So if the landlord does not do anything, this will often result in the tenant giving other debts priority.

Even if the tenant cannot afford, long term, to stay in the property, if things are dealt with promptly then it may be possible for things to be kept under control until the landlord can evict the tenant under the cheaper section 21 procedure. This will allow the tenant to apply for local authority housing which, if the tenant has a family, they will be entitled to. However if the tenant is being evicted for serious rent arrears, the tenant may also have lost the right to be re-housed if the Local Authority consider he is responsible for the eviction himself (i.e. because he did not pay rent when he should have done).

Most landlords are reasonably humane people and will want to help their tenants if they can. However, many will not know what to do when tenants fall into arrears, or understand the situation their tenants are in vis a vis Local Authority re-housing. Hopefully this new service will be of assistance.

Local authority takes action on illegal HMOs

I was pleased to read in this report that in Kings Lynn, Local Authority officials are checking up on HMOs. There is not much point in having laws to legislate HMOs, poor conditions in property, and the like if nothing is done about it.

As was pointed out by Mark P in the comment here (you need to scroll down), many Local Authorities are unable to do anything due to lack of funds, so it is good to see that are taking their responsibilities seriously.

My feeling is that the only way properties owned by the worst landlords are going to be improved for their tenants is via action from Local Authorities. Probably the most effective course of action would be for the LAs to do the repair work themselves and then re-coup the cost from the landlord. They do actually have the power to do this now, but perhaps for them to use these powers, their right to recoup the cost from the landlord should be beefed up a bit. If landlords feel that they are going to lose their rent for a few months or years, it may persuade them to put their own house in order, so as to avoid it being put in order for them.

Policing the Landlords

I have just listened to an interesting program on Radio 4 (via the listen again facility) which is on problems tenants at the lower end of the market experience. The presenter finally managed to speak to one of the landlords whose properties featured in the program, who took the view that he was spending loads of money doing up properties for ‘scumbags’, who then don’t look after them properly (leading, he implied, to the condition the presenter found them in). Hmm.

It is very sad that this sort of thing is still going on, and that some tenants are frightened to report poor conditions because they are scared of being evicted. Either legally via section 21 or by the boys coming round to evict them forcibly.

The program mentioned the current review of the private sector being undertaken at York University, and it will be interesting to see if there are any suggestions in the report on how to deal with this sort of thing.

The program pointed out that the majority of landlords are responsible and provide decent properties. No doubt they would be very happy to see the back of the criminal landlord who gives them all a bad name.

At the time of writing you can listen to the program via this link, but I am not sure how long this will stay online.

Bernstein and Floyd

Readers who were interested in my earlier post on the landlord whose disabled tenant appealed against a possession order obtained under s21, will be interested in this quote from the final paragraph in the report in the recent case of S -v- Floyd (with the Equality and Human Rights Commission joined in as an interested party):

one of the members of this court has dealt recently with an application for permission to appeal from a judgment of a Circuit Judge (Bernstein v Tate, December 21, 2007) in a case involving what would normally be a mandatory order for possession under section 21 of the 1988 Act. The tenant claimed that non-payment of rent was due to various health problems including depression, as a result of which she had to stop working, and her incapacity and housing benefit was used in paying off her overdraft instead of the rent. Prior to Malcolm the District Judge made a possession order on the basis that the tenant's disability had nothing to do with the landlord's decision to seek possession. But the Circuit Judge granted a stay, set aside the original possession order and re-listed the matter for evidence of the tenant's disability and further submissions. This appears to have been on the basis that the tenant had a reasonable prospect of success in showing that she was disabled for the purposes of the 1995 Act, and that she was entitled to a stay of the mandatory possession order.

The wording of this quotation seems to imply that the CA do not entirely agree with the Circuit Judge's assessment of the tenant's prospects of success.

The Floyd case itself will bring some comfort to landlords. Here the tenant had an order for possession made against him under the mandatory possession ground 8 as he was over £7,000/123 weeks in arrears of rent. The tenant admitted this but tried, via the appeal process, to prevent the landlord obtaining possession because he suffered a mental disability, citing the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. However the Court of Appeal made it clear that so far as they were concerned, the DDA did not entitle tenants to get out of their legal obligations just because they are disabled:

It is not immediately obvious (a) how the 1995 Act could provide a basis for resisting a claim for possession on a statutory mandatory ground or (b) how a landlord would be unlawfully discriminating against a disabled tenant by taking steps to enforce his statutory right to a possession order for admitted non-payment of rent for 132 weeks. The 1995 Act was enacted to provide remedies for disabled people at the receiving end of unlawful discrimination. It was not aimed at protecting them from lawful litigation or at supplying them with a defence to breach of a civil law obligation. Like other anti-discrimination legislation, the 1995 Act created statutory causes of action for unlawful discrimination in many areas, such as employment, the provision of goods, facilities and services and the disposal or management of premises, but it did not create any special disability defence to the lawful claims of others, such as a landlord's claim for possession of premises for arrears of rent. The legislation is not about disability per se: it is about unlawful acts of discrimination on a prohibited ground, ie., unjustified less favourable treatment for a reason which relates to the disabled person's disability.

However we are all waiting to hear what the House of Lords decide in the leading case of Malcolm, which has been discussed by me previously here. I am sure that all landlords will be hoping that this will make it clear that just because a tenant turns out to be disabled, this does not mean that the landlord will be effectively forced to house them rent free forever. Which would effectively be the case if any attempt to enforce their rights to possession (even where they are supposed to be mandatory) were blocked on the basis that they are discriminatory. Even if (as in the cases of Bernstein and Floyd) the landlord did not actually know that the tenants were disabled.

Note - if you want to read more about the technicalities of these cases, you will find detailed posts on the Nearly Legal blog. However unless you are a housing lawyer (and perhaps even then), you may find it makes your head hurt.

OFT challenges unfair terms in landlords agency agreements

Landlords nationwide will be delighted at the action being taken by the Office of Fair Trading, regarding letting agents Foxton’s agency terms and conditions.

Under these agency agreements, Foxtons claim commission from landlords for tenants found by them when the tenant stays on after the end of the tenancy agreement, even if they (ie Foxtons) are no longer involved in the management of the property, and even if the landlord has sold the property! (In which case the landlord would not be receiving any benefit from the tenant at all.) They also claim commission if the property is sold to the tenant, even though they may have paid no part in the sale negotiations.

Foxtons claim that these terms are fair, but the OFT disagree and have issued a High Court action for an injunction to stop them using them. They are also asking the court to make a declaration that they are unfair, in breach of the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999.

If the OFT are successful, they will be bringing action against any other letting agents which have similar terms in their agency agreements (and there are many!).

This is a much needed action. Landlords have been complaining for years about these clauses which in many cases are ‘money for nothing’.

You can read about the items on the OFT web-site here.

More on the new tenancy agreements

Still working on the new plain English tenancy agreements for Landlord-Law. I had a fair few responses to my consultation and the responses were (one the whole) gratifyingly positive.

No-one said that they definitely didn’t like the new version (there were just a couple of not sure’s), and the main criticism was that it would take up more paper. However unfortunately this is inevitable if you use plain English (which generally means more words – legal jargon is often just legal shorthand) and spread the document out on the page a bit more so it is more readable.

I am actually really glad that I consulted with the members – some of them have come up with some really good points and made me look at things again and often change them. Plus they also picked up a few mistakes I hadn’t spotted!

I am now in the process of re-doing all the different varieties of agreement which is going to take some time. I am also developing a tenancy agreements section. Rather than have the agreements all on one page I am dividing them up, which will hopefully make them easier to find.

The new agreements should hopefully go live soon. I suppose I will then have to review all the other forms!

Plain English tenancy agreements

I haven’t been writing much in the blog recently because I have been doing a lot of other stuff. One the main things I have been concentrating on recently is a new draft of my standard tenancy agreement. I was going to give it an overhaul anyway, then I got involved with a client who wanted one of my agreements to be checked for a crystal mark, and I decided to use this experience to amend and adapt my own agreements to a plain English format.

Plain English agreements now need to be in the first person, so the landlord is ‘we’ and the tenant ‘you’. I found this very strange to start with but now I have got used to it and have come to accept it. It does make for a more approachable document.

I have used this as an opportunity to check and re-do every clause. It has taken ages. I think I have it sorted and then I look at it afresh and find more things I want to change. I think that the new agreement is definitely much better though.

I have also radically altered the design of the agreement. My old agreement was crushed into a small space with fairly small type and close columns. However I have been reading a bit about design (having bought myself The Non-Designer's Design Book), plus I have also been learning a bit more about using my layout software, Adobe Framemaker (using the Adobe Framemaker Classroom in a Book). As I result of this I have created a new design, which you can see here. It takes up a lot more space (13 pages) but I think it makes the document far more readable, and it is much easier to find specific clauses. Having the new design has also helped me amend the wording as well as somehow I found it easier to read and check it in the new format.

I have now taken the perhaps rash step of putting a draft online for my annual members to have a look at and comment on before I use it to replace all my other agreements. I have often had very good ideas and suggestions from members about the tenancy agreements, many of the current adaptations came from members suggestions.

Next I think a design overhaul of the rest of the forms …

More problems at the county court

I have written in the past about problems with the courts. That was about a court order having the wrong court details. In the past few weeks I have had, not only a further instance of the court / order mixup, but two very serious errors in the text of orders sent out to me.

One, which was an order relating to an Employment Tribunal award, actually gave us, the solicitors, as the defendants and not the real defendants! God knows what training the clerk who did it was given. To do them justice the court amended it pretty swiftly once we had pointed out the error (I wrote them a stern letter). Hopefully it will not affect our credit rating.

The other mistake was saying in an order for possession that the order was made under discretionary grounds when it had actually been made under mandatory grounds. A copy of Counsels’ endorsed backsheet soon sorted that out, but it just goes to show that you have to be really careful.

Merry Christmas, see you in the New Year

Sorry about the break in transmission folks. My muse has been busy with other things recently, but hopefully will be back on the blog job in the new year.

In the meantime, I wish you readers all the best for the Christmas holiday, followed by a happy and prosperous new year.

Tenancy agreement terms causing problems for local authority

A friend of mine who sits as a Deputy District Judge told me of an interesting case recently. Apparently a local authority tenant had moved out of his rented property, thereby losing his security of tenure and making his tenancy a common law one. The landlords had therefore served a notice to quit (as this is the appropriate notice for common law tenancies) and sought possession of the property.

However in the tenancy agreement there was a clause saying that the tenant could only be evicted after service of a notice of possession as provided under the provisions of the Housing Act 1985. This is the notice which is normally served for secure tenancies but which had not been served in this case as the tenancy was no longer secure. My friend concluded therefore that as no such notice had been served, he was not able to make an order for possession.

His view was that there is no reason why a landlord should not enlarge the tenants security of tenure under the terms of the tenancy agreement, and that if the landlord does this, it should be binding upon him.

In the same way, in the case of Welsh -v- Greenwich London Borough Council, wording in the tenancy agreement was held to enlarge the landlords repairing obligations.

The moral being that local authorities should be more careful about the clauses included in their tenancy agreements. And that they should comply properly with the provisions of their tenancy agreements once these have been issued. And perhaps most importantly of all, they should ensure that their tenancy agreements are drafted by experienced housing lawyers and reviewed regularly.

HMOs again

I have seen a couple of reports recently on the internet (here and here) saying that a study by Heritable Bank has recommended that the HMO system be reviewed, as there is such a wide discrepancy between the license fees charged by different local authorities, and also a wide variation in the way they deal with licensing generally.

Strangely, I cannot find any mention of this report on the Heritable Bank web-site, although maybe I am not looking in the right place.

However everyone who has anything to do with residential landlord and tenant law and practice, must know of this wide variation in license fees, which many feel is wholly unacceptable. It has been mentioned several times on this blog, and I have also been developing a list of different license fees, which you will find here. Fees on this list run from about £30-50 per room or unit to £1,100 for Newcastle (as mentioned in the articles). In fact though, the most expensive Local Authority to my knowledge is Southend. However they cunningly disguise their high charge by saying that it is £660 for two years, whereas most authorities charge for a five year period. The Southend fee for a five year period works out at £1,650.

There is no doubt that the new HMO regulations have greatly upset landlords, and I believe that many former HMO landlords have now sold up altogether. On the whole I do not think that the regulations are too excessive. The worst problem, that of the wash hand basin requirement for large HMOs, has now been dealt with. The regulations were only introduced last year and perhaps should be given a bit longer to bed in before any revisions are made. However I do think that the wide fee variation is generally undesirable and this aspect should be looked at. Whether it will or not, is of course another matter.

The good, the bad, and the exhausting

I am just recovering from an exhausting week. Thursday saw the first course we have run via our training company Legal Professional Training Ltd. It was a good day, but involved a huge amount of work and administration, and left me feeling like the proverbial limp dishrag.

Things were not helped by the fact that I had also been working on an upgrade of Landlord-Law for several weeks, which went live the following day. Not very good timing. Particularly as the upgrade went wrong! A rather overlong period then ensued of checking things on the live site, finding that they did not work properly or were not there, emailing my web-designer, and finding that she had gone out! Its all been sorted out now (well I hope it has …) but it was not a good time. I am pleased now its done though.

The upgrade includes a new Tenants Problem Solver, a new extensive section of the site with articles and information geared at problems experienced by tenants. Most tenants should now be able to afford to read it, as the other major introduction is a new membership fee of £4.70 for three days. So anyone can afford to take a look, so long as they can pay by credit card.

Hopefully this new section will not alienate my landlord members – the problem solver sets out tenants obligations as well as their rights, and good landlords (of course all my Landlord-Law members are good landlords) have nothing to fear from well informed tenants.

The week has ended with the broadband connection on my main computer suddenly going off (I am writing this on the laptop). I assume that a connection has disconnected but can’t work out which. There are so many wires under my desk that it is impossible to keep them in order (I have tried), or to work out what is wrong, even if it were possible to see them properly which I can’t. Another job for my computer service company I think.

So, one of those shattering weeks when good and bad come together in a climax at the same time so you don’t know whether to be pleased or in despair. I expect you get them too. Maybe next week will be calmer.