Last resort
The outcome of an anti-social behaviour case brought by a tenant could see landlords default to possession orders, says Neil Brand
The case of Brumby v Octavia Housing (Inside Housing, 23 July) concerns a tenant (Ms Brumby) who issued a claim for damages against her landlord (Octavia) due to anti-social behaviour caused by a former tenant and her visitors.
Ms Brumby alleges that Octavia was liable for the acts of the tenant’s visitors, although those visitors were transient and were never encouraged expressly or impliedly to behave in the manner complained of.
Ms Brumby’s claim suggests that Octavia should have blocked off an area outside her flat from which some (but not all) of the nuisance behaviour was perpetrated.
Octavia in fact spent a great amount of time and money seeking to address the problems, including installing CCTV, obtaining an injunction and, ultimately, a possession order against the tenant.
If the court ultimately finds Octavia liable for nuisance in these circumstances, landlords, rather than risk being found to have taken the ‘wrong’ type of action against a nuisance tenant, may decide instead to simply take immediate possession action against the perpetrator, to effectively move the problem on. This would undoubtedly have a ‘knock-on’ effect on arguments before the court as to whether it is reasonable in all the circumstances for a possession order to be made. Essentially, if a landlord has no choice but to issue a possession claim, how can it be anything other than reasonable for a possession order to be made?
Octavia is now considering the merits of seeking permission to appeal against the decision not to strike out the claim.
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Readers' comments (1)
kass | 06/08/2010 11:57 am
so how is the victim protected?... You got to stop, effectively stop, the antisocial behaviour. Those charged to do so and do not do it (ie failure to protect the victim) surely cannot have any excuse and have to take all the blame.
If to protect victims is not the absolute priority, then is just senseless.
In a way it would be much more interesting if Octavia win on appeal, so that either this matter goes all the way yp to the Lords or that victims of antisocial beahviour can really get angry about the ineffectivity of social landlords and come out into streets protest rather than just go on filling spending the rest of their lives filling up diaries with their sufferings.
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