News and Articles

The answer to the question: “No documents-what next?” of course very much depends on the context in which you ask it. One might for example have to give a very different answer if one had just been involved in a car accident than one might give if stopped in the street by a policeman in North Korea.

Mixed use is most certainly in vogue. We constantly read about new gleaming mixed use developments where developers have residential properties usually situated above offices, shops, restaurants or even hotels. In many respects this is nothing new and is a return to the pre Victorian way we lived.

Amanda Gourlay’s expertise in landlord and tenant law covers the right to manage, appointment of a manager, breaches of covenant, forfeiture and associated insolvency. She is the voice behind Law and Lease, the blog which she created in 2012 to record and comment – with dry humour and occasional irreverence – on service charge decisions. Notable cases in which Amanda has appeared include: Church Commissioners v Koyale Enterprises [2012] 2 EGLR 42 and Chowdhury v Bramerton Management Company Ltd [2014] UKUT 260 (LC). Amanda appears regularly in the FTT and has a growing Upper Tribunal practice.

The authorities on the 1954 Act are a bit like buses. Nothing for ages and then two at once. This year the Court of Appeal has heard two appeals concerning the proper application of the “fault based” grounds of opposition set out in section 30(1)(a) to (c) of the Act. In both cases the landlord succeeded in opposing the grant of a new tenancy on ground (c) by reason of the tenant’s previous conduct.

Torquil Gyngell is a fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, a member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and an accredited mediator

Some nice member of the PLA was kind enough to tell the Legal 500 this year that Joanne is ‘undoubtedly one of the leading property silks, who is destined for the top.’ That destiny is now fulfilled, “the top” clearly meaning the Chairmanship of the PLA Autumn Training Day. She is thrilled to have reached these dizzy heights.

Presentation

The PLA have conducted a survey of its members, cost lawyers and PBA members to gauge opinion on the recent Jackson Cost Budgeting reforms. The survey suggests a general dissatisfaction with the reforms and how the reforms have been implemented.

The Land Registration Act 2002 (“the LRA 2002”) came into force 11 years ago. After 152 years of “the land registration project” over 80% of the land in England and Wales is registered. The Law Commissioner responsible for property projects, Professor Elizabeth Cooke, recently said: "the purpose of title registration is to guarantee title"

Tenants should avoid conditional break clauses if they can.