On 18th July 2017, the first case to test the waters after the Supreme Court case of Ilott v The Blue Cross and others (2017), was handed down in Leeds County Court.

In recent years there has been a huge challenge on how the average person can afford legal services.

Legal aid has been eradicated from most areas of law. Success fees and insurance premiums are no longer recoverable from the opponent and so makes it more difficult for firms to offer No Win No Fee arrangements.

As an aspiring lawyer I had obviously heard of HJA and in fact I had applied for a traineeship at the firm, but alas it was not meant to be. Instead in 2005 I qualified at a high street firm in Camden, incidentally a stone throw’s away from HJA’s then office on Camden High Street.

This week I read with interest in my local newspaper how Newham had become the first local authority to exercise new powers conveyed under the Housing and Planning Act 2016 (effective from 6 April 2017)

A fine of £5,000 was issued to a landlord who had failed to install fire alarms in the property in question which was a serious breach of their property licence.

It was widely reported last week that Taylor Wimpey has set aside £130million to correct the rent review terms of the good rent in some of their new build leasehold properties.

Ground rent is normally an annual sum paid by a leaseholder to their freeholder. They are usually very modest sum, and some even set at ‘peppercorn’. The problem with the ground rent in the leasehold properties in question, is that they are set to double every 10 years.