Homeless reviews.... Only if you pay up first

Now i am sure many of my industry peers will have come across this problem before, however its a first for me having recently changed the Borough i work in

I saw a client who had been given a Not Priority Need decision, as i always do i put in to review this, as i can mostly find an error when trawling the housing file

Now the previous Borough council i worked with were very helpful and would supply the housing file , albeit after some vigorous chasing, free if charge

So you can imagine my surprise when this local council refused to release the file without £10 payment

Now i appreciate there is no law stopping them from charging, but this hit me with a dilemma.

Who pays the £10?

I work for a charity we have no spare funding for this

The client is homeless with very limited funds, £10 to them is a lot of money

I tried to reason with said council, but no joy and as they outsource the review, another situation i had not come up against before, the reviewers were threatening to carry out the review without my input

Thankfully the client is now house and not under homeless duty

But i am still left with the dilemma for future clients, if a client cannot afford to pay for their housing file is this in someway discriminating against their legal right to review?

Im not a solicitor so any input would be appreciated 

  

New Rules for Section 21 Notices

From 1^st October, changes to the way a section 21 notice can be served will come into force.

These changes will start to effect assured shorthold tenancies due to hit the 6 month mark in April

These changes are a combination of the Deregulation Act 2015 and The Assured Shorthold Tenancy Notices and Prescribed Requirements (England) Regulations 2015

These changes ONLY apply to NEW tenancies starting after 1^st October 2015, this WILL include any RENEWAL tenancies where a new fixed term tenancy is drawn up, this will NOT affect any tenancy migrating onto a statutory periodic tenancy from a fixed term.

The section 21 notice will also now be in a new prescribed form.

Landlords and letting agents will not be able to issue a section 21 notice at the commencement of a tenancy, this is currently normal practice. A section 21 will not be able to be served on a tenant until 4 months have passed from the start of the tenancy.

New Time Limit: A possession claim cannot be started on a section 21notice after the end of 6 months from the date the notice was given. Or for a s.21(4) notice where the notice period has to be longer than two months, a possession claim cannot be started based on that notice more than 4 months after the end date specified in the notice
Section 21s will now also have a shelf life, if possession proceedings are not brought within 6 months of serving the notice, the notice becomes invalid and a new notice must be served

New legislation to protect tenants from retaliative evictions.

Tenants in private rented accommodation ONLY, will be protected from eviction if they have made a legitimate complaint about the condition of the property to their landlord.

 

This New Retaliative Eviction law will come with rules which must have been followed Before a Section 21 notice is served by the landlord

• Tenant must make a formal written complaint to the landlord of the disrepair/condition
• Landlord has 14 days to respond (an adequate response by the landlord is a response in writing which—provides a description of the action that the landlord proposes to take And sets out a reasonable timescale within which that action will be taken)
• If no response from landlord – a section 21 served now would be invalid.
• Tenant must then report this unresolved issue to Local authority
• ONLY once the local authority has confirmed that the repair needs to be carried out to prevent a potential risk to health and safety, will the new rules come into play.
• The landlord will not be able to evict a tenant for 6 months

A landlord will also be prevented from evicting a tenant where they have not complied with certain legal obligations such as

• Supplying Gas Safety Certificates
• Supplying Energy Performance Certificates.

This restriction would be lifted as soon as these documents are provided

If a Property is on the market for sale, then it is likely the new rules will NOT apply to Section 21s regardless of the condition of the property

A section 21 served after 1^st October, will not be required to expire on the last day of a period, all that will now be required is two clear months notice. To accompany this is the requirement to repay the tenant pro rata the ‘unused’ proportion of any rent paid in advance where the s.21 expires in the course of a rent period and the tenant leaves.