Civil way: 8 July 2016

• Landlords bless Supreme Court.
• Sherlock Holmes wrong on fact finding.
• New service charge code.
• Legal aid goes soft on MIAMs.
• London more expensive.
• Direct access: ecstasy and agony.

PHEW!

Private landlords have escaped. Where it is a public authority seeking possession of premises, the occupier can defend on the ground of proportionality (Manchester City Council v Pinnock [2010] UKSC 45, [2011] 1 All ER 285). The Supreme Court scotched the idea that the same defence could be run with a private tenancy on 15 June 2016 in McDonald v McDonald and others [2016] UKSC 28, [2016] All ER (D) 81 (Jun) in which even the Residential Landlords Association poked in its nose as intervener in writing. Private landlords do deserve a break what with retaliatory eviction, the deposit protection minefield, a prescribed notice under s 21 of the Housing Act 1988 and more traps than a mice farm on April Fool’s Day to contend with (see Civil Way 165 NLJ 7671, p 17, 165