Insights

Derbyshire rents to rise

Thursday, January 21st, 2010 in News, Residential

The local council in Derby is trying to increase council housing rents to align with other social housing landlords.

Vice-chairman of the panel John Newbold said: “We know as tenants we can’t change it, but we want to discuss it in view of the financial insecurity a lot of tenants are facing. In my view, the rise of 2.5% to 3% is looking good but there are other things we need to discuss, such as service charges.”

The Government wants local authorities and housing organisations to work towards similar rents to those of social landlords, which are traditionally higher than local authority charges.

Tags: Council house, Derby, Housing, Public housing

Commentary on the work of LVT

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 in News, Residential

The Nearly Legal blog has a nice year end post about the volume and type of work undertaken by the Residential Property Services Tribunal or LVT

It compares firstly Service Charge s.27A applications with Enfranchisement applications and for the first time since 2006 there are more service charge applications (nearly 3000) than enfranchisements (just over 2000)

Francis Davey, the author, puts this down to

I would like to think that better publicity of the service charge jurisdiction has pushed s.27A applications higher, but that may also be due to increasing financial straights in which leaseholders find themselves and a concomitant reluctance to pay anything that is not strictly required.

His second chart relates to determinations about Fair Rent and Market Rents and the former vastly outstrips the latter by around two to one each year since 2006.

Nice summary, thanks Francis.

Tags: housing law, Legal Information