Until now, councils could only impose fines on landlords renting homes which breach legal levels of health and safety. These fines would usually be a fraction of the rogue landlords’ potential gains. However, slum landlords could now be forced to give up all earnings from their criminal activity. Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 Brent Council …
Read more >Does waking up in the morning to a birdsong sound idyllic to you? Yes, provided the wakeup call is not at 4 in the morning, every morning and caused by noisy pigeons… A couple renting a property in North West London was reported to be persistently disturbed by pigeons cooing that kept them awake daily …
Read more >That’s how a single mum, Rosie Keogh, felt when a letting agency rejected her application because she was on state benefit. Rosie had been living in the same property for 11 years and paying her rent in full each month, before she applied for a property in Kings Heath in Birmingham. As a housing benefit …
Read more >Amendments to a 30 year old Scottish law will see significant changes to the fire and smoke alarm regulations that will benefit everyone, regardless of tenure. The existing standards for fire and smoke alarms in Scotland are already high in the private rented sector and now they are going to be extended to all homes …
Read more >Havering Council advised a tenant to break back into the property she had vacated just 24 hours earlier on the basis “she still had the right of occupation”. The single mother in receipt of housing benefit rented a two bedroom property in Romford from Lewis Selt a year ago. A few months after moving in …
Read more >The start of 2018 heralds some new changes again for Universal Credit in England, Northern Ireland and Scotland, yet in different ways for the separate countries. Universal Credit was introduced by former Conservative Leader, Iain Duncan Smith. He created it with the aim to help make the system simpler by introducing one single payment to …
Read more >
