Landlords – Keep Your Properties Hazard Free or Face the Full Force of the Law

The balance of power in overheated rental markets where demand outstrips supply tends to shift in favour of landlords. As a High Court ruling showed, however, those involved in renting out defective or hazardous homes are likely to feel the hard edge of both the criminal and civil law.

A…

Oct 09, 2023

A couple with four young children complained to a local authority about the state of their rental property. A housing enforcement officer visited the house and identified serious hazards, including defective heating, faulty wiring, inadequate smoke detectors and a bed bug infestation.

The property’s long leaseholder and its managing agents were served with improvement notices under the Housing Act 2004, requiring them to complete specified remedial works. Both received substantial fines after being successfully prosecuted for failing to comply with the notices.

Further inspections of the property, however, revealed that the criminal proceedings had not had their desired effect. The required remedial works remained incomplete and no or minimal steps were said to have been taken to improve the tenants’ living conditions. Faced with that impasse, the council resorted to the civil law, seeking a mandatory injunction to compel the defendants to comply with the notices.

Granting the order sought, the Court was satisfied that the defendants, who had failed meaningfully to engage in the proceedings, were in knowing, flagrant and continuing breach of the criminal law. Their disregard of the requirements of the notices had real-world consequences for the tenants, who continued to suffer unsatisfactory and possibly unsafe housing conditions.

Given that the defendants had shown no intention to comply with the notices, the Court found that nothing short of an injunction would be effective in bringing them to heel. They were further ordered to pay the council’s legal costs. Any breach of the injunction could amount to a contempt of court, punishable by up to two years’ imprisonment or an unlimited fine.

‘Long Covid’ Recognised as a Disability in Important Employment Ruling

Following recovery from the immediate effects of COVID-19, a substantial number of people have gone on to suffer from a phenomenon commonly known as ‘long Covid’. In an important ruling, an Employment Tribunal (ET) found that the condition is capable of amounting to a disability within the meaning of Section 6 of the Equality Act 2010. The case concerned a charity worker who initially suffered mild, flu-like symptoms after contracting the virus. At the end of his isolation period, however, he…

Grocery Supplier Fined After Worker Killed by Reversing HGV

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No Transfer of Vicarious Liability Under TUPE, High Court Rules

When a transfer of a business takes place to which the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (TUPE) applies, does any vicarious liability of the original employer to a third party for wrongdoing by an employee transfer to the new employer? The High Court has answered that question with a resounding ‘no’. A woman was seeking damages for wrongs suffered while she had been a hospital inpatient. She claimed that the company that had owned the hospital was responsible…