Sutton private tenants' evening
On 4th October 2011 our partner Deirdre Forster spoke to tenants living in the London Borough of Sutton about their rights when finding and reserving private accommodation. She warned of some of the tricks practised by less scrupulous letting agents and of the bad practices of some "amateur landlords". She drew tenants' attention to the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations which make many commonly used terms in tenancies void. More information about unfair tenancy terms can be obtained from the Office of Fair Trading's website.
If you think you have been badly treated by a private landlord or a letting agent, you may be able to receive advice free of charge from SHELTER or a local advice centre. You can receive advice from us on this subject in a fixed fee interview, see "our fees"
We are in the Legal 500!
The Legal 500, now in its 25th year is widely acknowledged as one of the best legal referral guides. Only the top firms are named and as from September 2011, that includes us! This is what they say:
Powell Forster Solicitors provides ‘a first-class service to tenants and housing applicants’, and ‘has an in-depth knowledge of assured shorthold tenancies and the tenancy deposit scheme’. ‘Champion of the 'underdog’ Deirdre Forster is ‘an expert in disrepair claims’. The ‘knowledgeable and experienced’ Tim Powell acts as a duty solicitor for defendants in possession proceedings, and is ‘always quick on his feet’.
Many thanks to the clients and fellow professionals who were kind enough to recommend us.
Good bye to referral fees!
As mentioned before, we don't like referral fees, we think they are distasteful. We therefore welcome the government's recent announcement that they are at last going to ban them. The next problem to be addressed is cold calling. This sort of ambulance chasing just gives the impression of a compensation culture.
Training the advisers
On 8th July 2011 our partners Deirdre Forster and Tim Powell co-presented a development course for housing advisors that was organised by the University of London Housing Services department (ULHS). We have a long and happy association with ULHS who do brilliant work for the students of London.
The course was attended by advisors from a number of London Universities and some participants came from as far away as Aberystwyth and Bradford!
Topics that we covered included unfair contract terms in tenancies, the small claims process and the Tenancy Deposit Scheme. Our ULHS colleague Aisling gave an excellent presentation about how to check a tenancy agreement.
We love education work and from the feedback, the participants enjoyed the day as much as we did.
MPs wake up to injustices as Reform Bill moves on
(from APIL, the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers)
Several MPs made interventions in a heated debate on the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill at its second reading on Wednesday (29 June 2011).
It was well-attended by Government and opposition MPs, with several raising issues on all aspects of the Bill, including the proposals for the reform of civil litigation.
Among those with concerns was Simon Reevell, Conservative MP for Dewsbury, who addressed issues about medical negligence cases. He said: "In clinical negligence claims, a claimant inevitably requires expert medical evidence. As that is expensive the claimant can take out a policy to insure against the cost, if the claim fails. At present, that is recoverable from the other side and will remain so, but only in clinical negligence cases. If the same injuries with the same consequences occurred as a result of a surgeon driving into the victim, rather than performing a negligent operation, the premium will have to be paid by the successful claimant from the damages they receive."
The Government won the vote, although five Government MPs were amongst the 205 who voted against.
The Civil Justice Review
The Government plan to change the rules so that wrongdoers have to pay less and the shortfall will come out of the compensation paid to victims of accidents or bad housing. The changes are likely to be in force sometime in 2012. They will only affect cases taken on after that date. Watch this space!
Compensation Culture?
The government does not like CFAs (conditional fee agreements, also known as “no win no fee” agreements) even though it introduced the system when the Conservatives were last in power. They think they have led to a “compensation culture”. In fact, with the exception of road traffic accidents, the number of claims for injury has gone down over the last 10 years. We think that any perception of a compensation culture comes from the mass advertising by “claims farmers”, who sell cases to some solicitors.
Referral fees
Over the past ten years a claims industry has grown up that tries to find people who have been injured and then sell their cases to solicitors. This industry uses mass advertising. Some “claims farmers” even use cold calling methods such as sending out random text messages. It has now been revealed that insurers for Defendants sell on information about the people that have been injured by their insured drivers. You may have heard Jack Straw speaking about this recently.
We have never paid referral fees and have nothing to do with such practices. We are small enough not to need the volume of cases that would make it necessary to work with a claims farmer. We rely on our local reputation and of course this website for our personal injury work.
Powell Forster and Legal Aid
Our mission statement is to assist those most at a disadvantage in the legal system so when we started we were very much a legal aid practice. The government took away legal aid for accident cases in 2000 so we developed an expertise in no win no fee. We continued to carry out housing work on legal aid. In 2006 the government proposed a new legal aid contract and we felt unable to sign it. We did not see how we could continue to provide our service on the government’s terms. We miss our legal aid clients but have discovered that there are plenty of people who do not qualify for legal aid and who need our help.
Then in 2007 the government changed the legal aid contract for housing by asking firms to give advice on very complex subjects for very low fees. The contract was unfair in a number of respects and we refused to sign it. Since then we have been using our expertise of no win no fee to help tenants and leaseholders.
The fight to keep what is left of legal aid continues and we are active members of the Sound off for Justice Campaign. We encourage you to join it too.
The Tenancy Deposit Scheme
Some landlords seem to run a cottage industry by never returning tenancy deposits to their tenants at the end of lettings. They rely on the fact that most tenants do not have the time to take them to court. The government tried to address this common malpractice in the Housing Act 2004 which came into effect in 2007. The Act is supposed to provide that if a landlord fails to protect a tenant’s deposit in one of three authorised schemes, the landlord must pay a penalty of three times its value. Unfortunately the Act was not well worded and a number of legal cases over the past year have diluted its effect. The Localism Bill that is going through parliament at present should put these provisions back on track. We certainly hope so!
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