Housing Law is the law relating to the security and condition of your home. It includes landlord and tenant law, mortgages, the law relating to homeless people, housing allocation and local authority powers to regulate and improve housing conditions. These days it is also one of the Government's main tools in tackling anti-social behaviour (see Housing Links).

NACAB's Adviceguide gives a good description of the rights of tenants - go to their website, click on "Housing". For the rights of homeless persons, click on "Housing", then "Finding Accommodation" and then on "Help for homeless people".

If you are a solicitor or advice agency with a legal aid/public funding contract, then you used to be able to phone 1 Pump Court’s Housing Helpline but funding was terminated in 2008. Shelter still run a helpline so you can try them instead.

Dr Keen & NowMedical are well-known amongst those who act for the homeless and those in need of housing. I have updated my page on their work, including producing a comprehensive list of court cases in which he has been mentioned.

GATEKEEPING

Gatekeeping is a practice where local authorities turn homeless applicants away for spurious reasons without considering their applications for help properly and it has become a serious problem.

The High Court ruled on gatekeeping, amongst other matters, in R (Aweys) v Birmingham CC [2007] EWHC 52 (Admin); [2007] HLR 27. The House of Lords over-ruled some of the points made in Aweys in Ali v Birmingham CC; Moran v Manchester CC [2009] UKHL 36 but you can download a briefing of what remains.

The most recent gatekeeping cases concerned Birmingham’s deliberate policy of using the wrong test to limit the access for homeless applicants to temporary accommodation (R (Kelly) v Birmingham CC [2009] EWHC 3240 (Admin)) and Lambeth’s avoidance of a ruling by conceding the individual case (R (Raw) v LB Lambeth [2010] EWHC 507 (Admin)).

MYTHS Pt I

In Aweys (see right) counsel for Birmingham claimed that her clients received one-fifth of all homelessness applications in the country. My researches suggested it was actually 5%. I didn’t think it worth mentioning this during the initial court hearing because it didn’t seem material. Unfortunately, Collins J repeated it and now Baroness Hale has propogated the myth further – Ali v Birmingham CC (see right) at paragraph 22. Stay silent at your peril!!

New Case notes

I have added new casenotes about two interesting housing law cases on my Reported Cases page.

Training courses

My colleagues and I in 1 Pump Court’s Housing Team regularly give training courses.  If you would like details or further copies of our handouts, please contact our PR Administrator, Darren Chadwick-Hussein.