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

Pexels andrea davis 17965208 683x1024

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 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.

Company That Labelled Employees as Self-Employed Receives Comeuppance

Many businesses that persist in labelling their employed staff as self-employed have met their comeuppance during the COVID-19 pandemic. That was certainly so in the case of a company that was ordered to pay compensation of more than £50,000 to a woman who was sacked after asserting her colleagues’ employment rights. The company ran a beauty salon at which the woman was engaged to work as PA to the founder and to provide treatments. Her contract was labelled as a consultancy agreement. When the…

Gender-Critical Beliefs Entitled to Legal Protection – Test Case Ruling

A person’s philosophical beliefs may be viewed as wrong and offensive by some, but that does not exclude them from protection under the law. The Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) made that point in a unique test case concerning a think tank researcher who believed that sex is immutable and not to be conflated with gender identity. The woman considered that statements such as ‘woman means adult human female’ and ‘trans women are male’ are statements of neutral fact that are not transphobic and…

Children’s Worker Succeeds in Disability Discrimination Claim

A man who works for an organisation providing community-based services to children has been awarded compensation after an Employment Tribunal (ET) found that his employer had discriminated against him due to his disability and failed to make reasonable adjustments. When he began working for the organisation, he completed a medical questionnaire in which he noted that he was autistic. Initially his role involved play work provision for children with neurodevelopmental conditions, but he was…