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- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
- [00:15]
B
Hello, welcome to the inaugural edition of the this Is Housing Podcast, brought to you by the expert team of solicitors in the housing department at Duncan Lewis. My name is Richard Mahal and I am a solicitor in the housing department at Duncan Lewis, which is headed up by Manjinder Kaul Atwell, who is with me today for this inaugural episode. The purpose of this podcast is to bring housing law to a wider audience for lay people so that laypeople can understand better their rights and understand their responsibilities. So joining me today is Avais Pamwala, a trainee solicitor in the team at Duncan Lewis. Avais, do you want to introduce yourself briefly?
- [01:04]
C
Yes. Hi, everyone. So, I'm a trainee solicitor at Duncan Lewis. I've been here for about three years now and I work in a variety of different areas in housing that includes homelessness, disrepair, judicial reviews, amongst many other things. Yes, thank you.
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B
I've also got Dalget Singh Shinna joining us today. Daljit, do you want to introduce yourself?
- [01:33]
A
Hi, my name is Daljit. I am one of the solicitors at Duncan Lewis. I'm actually a razor supervisor who's sitting next to me, so that should be interesting to see what he's got to say today. And, yeah, I'm part of Manjinda's team, who's also here with the guest speaker deal with the same sort of work as Abay does. Housing, homelessness, possession, disrepair. We're here to help as many people as we can.
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B
Thanks, Dolja. Rita, another trainee sister, is here for today's episode. Rita, do you want to introduce yourself?
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D
Yes, sure.
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E
Thank you. Hello, I'm Rita Khan. I'm a trainee solicitor in the Housing department led by Manjinda. I do pretty much the same work as the rest. I have experience in homelessness matters, including statutory reviews and appeals, housing condition claims, injunctions, judicial review challenges and defending possession proceedings. I also enjoyed dealing with discrimination matters with the focus on the Equality Act 2010 claims as well as Care Act 2014.
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B
Thanks, Rita. And last but not least, we have Manjinder Kaur Atwell, the head honcho. Manjinder, would you like to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about how you came to be at Duncan Lewis?
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E
Oh, hello.
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D
My name is Manjin da Koatro. I'm the director. Thank you, Richard, for the lovely introduction. I have been a solicitor since, funny enough, April Fool's Day on 2011. So I've been practicing, practicing in housing and litigation for 12 years, but been working in the area of law for over 15 years. I've. I kind of Fell into housing, to be honest, it was when I first started as a paralegal, I actually specialized in, in criminal law. So I did that for a year and subsequently I was doing civil litigation work and my passion was in housing law and dealing with possession claims, disrepair, unlawful evictions, homelessness was, was an area of law that I had great interest in and I knew the work that we do could make a huge difference to people in the country. So yes, and until this day, I'm still very passionate about what, what I do and what we do as a firm.
- [04:09]
B
I might open this question up to the rest of our guests, but the purpose of today's episode is to really discuss broadly why housing law is in our view, such an important topic that people, normal people should be interested in or care about. Why do we think of a housing is such an important, such an important area of practice?
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C
I mean, to begin with, everybody has a home, right? It's such an important, integral part of everyone's day to day life to have somewhere to sleep safely, having a roof over their heads. And unfortunately what we find is that especially between landlords and tenants, a lot of people don't know their actual rights that they can apply in terms of enforcing repair works to be done or if, you know, in the worst case scenario, if somebody is threatened with homelessness, who can they go to? Is there anybody that they can reach out and get that support from their local authority or anybody else? And just based on those principles alone, it's quite an important piece of information
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B
that everybody should be aware of.
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C
So know your rights.
- [05:39]
B
I think people definitely underestimate the importance of housing law. It doesn't sound like the kind of area of practice that people associate with a typical city, city firm of solicitors, but it, I think it's fair to say. Rita, do you agree that housing law and housing law is becoming a more and more important area of practice because of the housing crisis?
- [06:04]
E
Yes, absolutely. I think even prior to the housing crisis there's been an ongoing issue. It's a concern as to what they said where people do not actually understand what their rights are. I think in relation to the government cuts on funding, it's limited a lot of people and it's just caused a bit of a concern in light of the situation with the cost of living. I think it's absolutely fundamental that people are aware of just how significant housing in itself is. Whilst it sounds broad, it is very much significant and actually it's quite a very complex area of law and people really don't Realize that.
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A
And what are the kinds of different
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B
legal principles that housing law involve in terms of practice on a, on a day to day basis? Dodge it. Someone who is a solicitor of several years post qualification experience, what kind of legal principles do you end up
- [07:14]
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dealing
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with on a day to day basis? Is it. What is housing law is in fact what I'm asking.
- [07:20]
A
That's a, that's a big topic. It's a big topic in the sense that it's not sexy, it's not one of those sort of things that you. Like you said it's not typical city central London sort of work, but as a raise and Rita Property correctly said, it affects literally everyone and it's a bit even wider than that. We're like a lot of discussion that we might have might be focused on the tenants rights, but similarly you got to look at it from both sides of the fence. There's also a landlord in multi, so we're here to help as many people as we can with landlords and tenants and we're also here to help people who actually might not have a home or a habitable home. And that could be massive. So you're looking at anything from homelessness, where you haven't got a home, so you might want to challenge a local authority to bring a claim. You know, any hurdles you might face whilst trying to make an application and thereafter, once you get into a home, there are different hurdles in that as well. So you know, it's your home habit. Can you live there? Should you be a living there? Should some works be done to it? As a landlord, what are you doing to me to ensure you comply with your partner tenancy obligations? And then from that it builds even further into, well, if I need my house back with my landlord seeking the house, the property back, what rights do I have? Like what do I need to do, what steps should I take? So it's such a wide range of work, effectively in such a massive area of law. It's so easy to get mixed up.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And it's so easy to get lost in it, like you said. No, you're right. But there's so many aspects of one area of housing. Where do you start? And that can be confusing.
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B
I think the, the relevant legal frameworks in that apply in the, in, in the, in the field of housing more generally can range from contract law to public law. There it's, it is, it is, it's. Housing is a regulated area. So there's plenty of legislation, primary and secondary legislation and all of that feeds in into the practice of housing law, but it makes it as a result, it's really a hybrid area of practice in a sense. You have to be a good generalist, I think in order to understand, in order to be a good housing solicitor. Manjinder, can we talk a little bit about the issue of funding for housing law kinds of challenges? What funding is there out there to assist tenants perhaps who are in a difficult situation, who have a difficulty with their landlord, they might be at risk of eviction, they might have received some notice asking them to leave, or they might have issues with the condition of the property. How can people in those kinds of situations enforce their rights and what funding regimes are, are in place?
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D
I think a lot of people misunderstand legal aid. Legal aid is available for those who are eligible for possession claims, for disrepair matters, for unlawful evictions. And I guess the problem is the lack of legal aid contracts and the lack of firms and lawyers dealing with legal aid in housing. And I think that's, that's the biggest issue that we are probably encountering at the moment is the legal aid rates are not great. So for some firms it doesn't make commercial sense on taking on legal aid work. But Also there is CFAs, no window fee agreements as they're known as available for housing law and the obvious private paying clients. But as we previously said earlier, the cost of living has impacted a lot of people who are probably unable to pay legal fees because they can be very costly, especially if you lose. But legal aid is something that I believe a lot of changes need to be made. I don't know if you all agree the hourly rates are not great. I don't think they've changed for many, many years. And a lot of firms are not taken on this work.
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B
So Manginda, specifically, if a tenant has a problem with, for instance, their boiler, it's broken and they ask their landlord to fix it and the landlord refuses, what can they do to enforce their rights? Is everyone eligible to receive legal aid? Is it only some people? Means testing that applies for legal aid?
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D
Not everybody is going to be eligible for legal aid. There is a criteria that needs to be satisfied with the legal aid agency. So those who are on benefits or low income possibly could be eligible for legal aid. But that's something. What we do at Duncan is we carry out the assessment and make a determination whether the client is or is not eligible for legal aid. But it doesn't end there. There are the different funding arrangements that can be put in place in order to assist a client. But we also, I mean if them funding arrangements are not going to work, then we do signpost them or we do try to assist. And what we do a lot of is pro bono work to assist these tenants or guide them on what they can and can't do. I think that's the, that's the difference because we, we do have the benefit of a legal contract. We are able to take on cases clients who unfortunately are not able to access legal advice elsewhere. Which is why we, we have clients from, from everywhere from Bristol, Dorset to London because of lack of legal aid contracts.
- [13:11]
B
So you talk about the lack of legal aid contracts in that it's not the case therefore that if you're a tenant you can just turn up to any solicitors firm and say, I've got a problem with my landlord, I want to enforce my rights but I'm on a low income. Can you give me legal aid and take my case on effectively with the benefit of legal aid and I don't have to pay anything. You have to approach a firm as solicitors that has a legal aid contract.
- [13:35]
D
Yes, so. And not many firms have that contract. So yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a difficult time. But we, we are doing as much as, as we can do.
- [13:46]
B
There's certainly been a surge in the number of current inquiries that we've been taking I think at Duncan Lewis over the past, over the past couple of years. I mean how. There is a dearth of legal aid legal aid solicitors who can provide advice and expert representation in the field of housing law generally. But I think that as the demand for this service has increased over the last couple of years with the acceleration of the housing crisis, there are fewer and fewer basically solicitors with capacity to take on, to take on new client matters. But we do our best but we
- [14:28]
D
are seeing a surge in a concerning number of possession cases. I think in the last 12 months, do you agree there's been an increase
- [14:36]
B
in the number of possessions?
- [14:38]
D
I mean this could be as a result of cost of living, people losing their jobs. Since COVID I mean that had a major impact on, on our area of law. I mean some areas of law kind of stopped working, but I thought during that period is probably the most busiest time I saw a lot of unorthodo evictions cases. During COVID the whole possession cases will possession claims were stopped.
- [15:04]
B
I think, I think definitely it's the case that the housing law is as an area of practice affected massively by what is going on in the wider economy. And so if there are regulatory, governmental changes that will have an impact upon the private rented sector that will therefore have an impact on tenants. There's obviously, as we saw with COVID recessions happening in the economy. It obviously impacts the whole gamut, the whole range of housing law practice. So at the moment, I think that perhaps, and I'll invite anyone else to comment on this, I think there are probably two to three factors that are really driving the the surge in demand for housing law advice and representation at the moment. The first is obviously, as Manjinda said, Covid. Two, there's been a slowdown in the economy and three, there are proposed changes by the government to things like Section 21, the Section 21 possession process, which is really the no fault eviction process by which a landlord can regain possession of their home. There are plenty of proposals by the government to actually outlaw section 21 and that's certainly, I think, having probably an impact on private landlords who are thinking whether or not they want to exit the market at this stage. What do you think, Rita?
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D
Yeah, definitely.
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E
I do agree with that. That's something we will be touching based on in future podcast episodes. So it would be good to stay tuned in relation to that and see what we've got to say and discuss.
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B
Are there any other things that you think are driving the, the increase in demand for housing and housing law advice and representation at the moment? Beyond what? Everything. Beyond the three things that I've outlined.
- [16:55]
A
I think you hit it probably a bit more squarely when you said we are affected by everything that happens in the widest political scale because from a tenant perspective, yes, unlawful evictions massively went up during COVID purely because they landlords couldn't get their houses back thereafter. During the same period of time, a lot of works can be done to houses. So they also fell into, you know, a state of disrepair, which you see a lot more tenants having issues with landlords taking a bit of a back step. On top of that, you've got the whole interest rate increase and the effect is having on mortgages. So the landlords themselves kind of think, well, it's not really viable for me to continue, so I need people out of the property in order for me to sell it or to do what I want, live in it or do anything else. But it's not something that they can afford to keep. So it all kind of affect the home. It doesn't matter, you know, be your home where you're staying or your rented home where you're giving out to others. Yeah, everything around landscape kind of affects it and it could be something as small as a bad winter. If you have a bad winter and you have a bit of disrepair in the property, that can massively exacerbate things going on in the house when you're home. And so that will have a spike in, you know, potential claims against landlords for not being able to keep their property in good condition. By the same token, if you've had a bad winter and something happens to the structure of the building, the landlord need to, you know, take steps in order to comply with their obligations. But again, in the current climate, can they afford to do so? Is that having an impact on more and more claims for possession people and then, you know, counter claims for disrepair or being bought in response? Because yeah, it's, it's a massive circle and it affects everything from top to bottom.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And we are kind of at the mercy of what's going on in the political landscape around us. Like you said, the Section 21 landlords thinking, well, if I'm. If everything is costing me more and I need to get rid of my property, I need to get them as soon as possible. Because if not, then no fault evictions are not going to exist anymore. How do I actually get a tenant who's otherwise been great out of the house?
- [18:56]
B
And the private rental sector is now so massive, particularly in London for, particularly for young people. Now people can't afford to buy homes, so they're dependent upon the private rental sector. And there is a balance between supply and demand. The government is always being lobbied to try to not do things that might end up reducing the supply of private rental sector properties. But then this is equal opposite reaction from tenants in the tenants lobby seeking greater regulation over private rental sector, over the private rental sector. Because I think at the moment it's fair to say that the private rental sector, there isn't so much, so much regulation. There hasn't been so much regulation until more recently with the introduction of the Fitness for Human Habitation Act. I think something we are now seeing coming down the road is, which will be quite interesting as the requirement that the private rental sector properties actually meet a certain minimum energy efficient efficiency standard. So that is going to require a lot of landlords to think about whether or not they actually want to retrofit insulation in their homes in order to bring them up to that minimum standard.
- [20:12]
A
And we might.
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B
That's going to have a huge impact probably on the supply as well, I think.
- [20:16]
A
And definitely. And it's more so than that tenants deserve. Yeah, you know, good home to live in. So should regulation be a private landlord, just as it is with social landlords or local authorities? Well, why not? And yes, it's own risk from the landlord, but it still affects your home. So yeah, there should be more regulation. Again then you've got the two lobbies saying, well, how much is too much regulation and what is the minimum that we need? So yeah, it's a very, it's a really interesting area.
- [20:43]
D
Yes, it's def. It's definitely a topic or conversation in the next episodes because I think we
- [20:49]
B
can really dive into it in a little bit more detail. Okay, well that's certainly very interesting and I think we've canvassed a number of topics there which we're going to go into into a lot of, a lot of detail on later episodes. So I think for today this was a whistle stop tour of the kinds of issues topics that we are going to be discussing on this podcast going forward, the purpose of which is to really help our audience understand their rights and their responsibilities when it comes to. When it comes to housing. So I hope that you'll join us on the next episode in which we'll be diving into the topic of disrepair, the big topic of disrepair. So I hope you'll join us for the next episode of the this is a housing podcast which Manjinder, Vais, Dalja and Rita will all be joining me to discuss the big topic of this repair. Thank you for joining us on this episode, the inaugural episode. Bye bye.
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D
Sam.