Housing Solicitors

Children under 18 may be 'looked after' by local authorities under a number of legal arrangements.

A recent decision of the Court of Appeal considered the responsibility of the local authority towards a 17-year-old boy who had nowhere to live but who, it deemed, was merely in need of help in obtaining accommodation.

The boy became homeless after his relationship with his mother had deteriorated so that it was considered irreparable. He spent some months sleeping at friends’ houses and in cars before he approached the London Borough of Southwark Council for help, asking it to consider his needs under the Children Act 1989 (ChA). The Council provided him with bed and breakfast accommodation whilst his claim was being considered.

In a case such as this there are two remedies available under the ChA. If it is considered necessary to provide accommodation (under Section 20), then the child becomes a ‘looked after child’. If the child remains looked after for a substantial period of time, the local authority has additional responsibilities, for example under the Children (Leaving Care) Although accomplished in different ways, almost all commercial leases have a clause which requires the tenant to pay a charge for services such as rates, electricity and so on. These clauses almost always require each tenant in the premises to pay a fair proportion of the listed service costs and they provide a mechanism by which such costs are to be calculated.

In a recent dispute between a landlord and tenant over service costs, the lease stated that the landlord would make an assessment of the charge each year and would send a notice to the tenant of the anticipated charges for the following year. The landlord was also required to ‘prepare and send the tenant a statement of the actual Service Costs and Service Charge for each Service Charge Year as soon as practicable after the end of such year’. The tenant was required to make good any shortfall on the previous year’s estimate of charges within 14 days.

Various works were carried out to the building. The landlord considered these to be ‘abnormal’, so that the cost of their completion fell outside the normal service costs. The landlord decided, therefore, to invoice these costs separately, so they were not included in the demand. The tenant did not pay the invoice.

The landlord went to court seeking payment. The judge concluded that since the procedure for claiming service charges had not been complied with, the sum claimed was not due.

The landlord appealed to the Court of Appeal, arguing that not all charges raised on tenants had to be by way of the terms set out in the lease. The Court rejected this approach, ruling that the lease set out the procedure the landlord had to follow and the landlord had not followed it.

The moral of the story for landlords is that it is essential to follow the procedure laid down in the lease and to comply with any other obligations (for example, the obligation to send a summary of rights and obligations to the tenant with the service charge demand). Failure to do so can prove to be very expensive.

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