News, events and consultations

Junior HLPA Conference 30th June 2023

Human Rights Start at Home:A Social Justice Conference

Junior HLPA invite you to attend a networking event on 30 June 2023 at Doughty Street Chambers, 54 Doughty St, London WC1N 2LS from 6pm to 8pm. This is an opportunity to meet students and junior members of the profession following the JHLPA conference. The conference has been organised to encourage law students to consider housing law as a profession by giving attendees an insight into the practice area and why housing law is such a vibrant and necessary field.Following the conference, the networking event will give the attendees an opportunity to meet HLPA members who can share their experiences of how they got into housing law and the important and fascinating work they do now! HLPA members will have the opportunity to meet law students who we hope will be the future social justice law and of our profession, and also to enjoy some free drinks and food courtesy of JHLPA!

If you would like to attend the networking event, please sign up using this form or email Frankie Hall at franceshall@bpp.com with your name and your current role so we can create a name tag for you for the networking event.

Open letter to the Secretaries of State for Housing and Justice – 10/10/2022

HLPA has written an open letter to Rt Hon Simon Clarke MP and Rt Hon Branden Lewis MP. We call on the government to honour its three year promise to abolish so called ‘no fault’ evictions and we also call for the instatement of an evictions moratorium.  In addition we point to the need for other significant medium and long term measures to protect renters and borrowers in the current cost-of-living crisis, a crisis which lands in the midst of a host of other longer term housing and other social crises.

Doing nothing at this moment of crisis, and the breaking of the 3-year-old commitment on ‘no fault evictions’ would be a total abnegation of leadership and responsibility.

 

Please read our letter here

Housing Law Conference 2023

The Housing Law Conference 2023

14 December 2023

SAVE THE DATE

This year’s Housing Law Conference will be held on a hybrid basis on 14 December 2023, with the live element taking place at 10 Union Street Conference Centre, London Bridge, London SE1 1SZ.  Further details will be available shortly, but please save the date in the meantime.

The Conference is sponsored by Doughty Street Chambers.

For more information, contact Professional Briefings at london@profbriefings.co.uk or 01920 282262.

Judgment handed down in Khan v Mehmood EWCA [2022] EWCA Civ 791

Khan v Mehmood 2022 EWCA Civ 791

HLPA members may recall that HLPA was granted permission to intervene in the Court of Appeal in this case concerning the applicability in housing disrepair cases of the 10% uplift to general damages, originating in the Court of Appeal’s decision in Simmons v Castle ([2012] EWCA Civ 1039, [2012] EWCA Civ 1288, [2013] 1 WLR 1239).

We were privileged to have offers to represent pro bono from Liz Davies QC and former co-chair Marina Sergides of Garden Court Chambers and from Daniel Fitzpatrick and Declan Storrar of Hodge Jones and Allen which allowed to us to make that application and then submit detailed written and oral representations in the Court of Appeal. Thanks must also go to exec member Eleanor Solomon of Anthony Gold who provided a witness statement on behalf of HLPA.

Judgment has now been handed down and on behalf of our clients we are delighted to be able to say that the Court of Appeal found that the Simmons and Castle uplift does apply to damages in these cases.

Moreover the Court was keen to make clear the importance of the intervention made by HLPA – from paragraph 58 of Baker LJ’s judgment:

As demonstrated by the statement and submissions on behalf of the HLPA, CFAs play an important role in assisting tenants to bring claims for breach of repairing covenants. Such claims are therefore manifestly within the category of cases for which the 10% uplift was specifically intended, by way of compensation for the success fee which the claimant tenant’s lawyer is entitled to be paid by his client but which, following LASPO, cannot be recovered from the defendant landlord. The need to secure funding for claims in the post-LASPO environment was integral to the recommendations in Jackson Report and the declaration made by this Court in Simmons v Castle. The arguments put before this Court on behalf of the HLPA demonstrate that it remains a very important consideration in this category of litigation.

This is a very important judgment for tenants seeking redress for disrepair and poor housing conditions. It ensures that a mechanism to mitigate historically low damages in these cases remains in place. We are also heartened that court recognised the important work done by you, the HLPA members.