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The government is introducing a new Housing Complaints Resolution Service to cover the entire housing market. It means that dissatisfied homeowners and tenants will have simple and quick access to help when things go wrong. Communities Secretary James Brokenshire said the new service will cover everything from broken boilers to cracks in the wall and
A bisexual prison officer who was taunted by colleagues as ‘gay’, ‘poof’ and ‘vermin’ was victimised and unfairly dismissed. That was the decision of the Employment Tribunal in a case involving 40-year-old Ben Plaistow and HMP Woodhill in Milton Keynes. Mr Plaistow began working at the prison in September 2014. Within a few weeks he
A group of homeowners whose flats are overlooked by the Tate Gallery have lost their claim that their privacy was being infringed by tourists who were able to see into their balconies. The flats are in a development close to the Tate Modern art gallery in central London. Their living areas look directly on to
The High Court has allowed a family to correct an error in a trust fund that would have had costly tax implications. The case arose out of financial arrangements outlined in the will of a man who died in 2015. He bequeathed £4.2m to be held on trust for the benefit of his widow and
The government is considering a stamp duty surcharge for non-UK resident homebuyers to reduce house price inflation and provide funds to help the homeless. The Treasury is conducting a study to consider how a new 1% increase to stamp duty costs for non-UK residents buying residential property in England and Northern Ireland would work. This
The Family Court has ruled that a 10-year-old boy who was abducted by his father and taken to England should be returned to his mother in Portugal. The mother and father, who also had a daughter aged 16, had separated in 2009 and subsequently divorced. In 2014, the father relocated to England but travelled to
A campaign for the government’s Prompt Payment Code to be compulsory rather than voluntary as it is now has been gaining cross party support from MPs. The idea was put forward by the Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT), which believes that the current voluntary system isn’t delivering for small businesses. The association has made three
Two builders have been ordered to pay compensation to a married couple despite claiming they were not responsible as individuals for problems with work they carried out. The couple had entered into a contract with builders advertising as HavenBuild, which was a trading name and not a limited company. The contract was for work on
More than 50 councils across England are to share nearly £2.4m of extra funding to crack down on rogue landlords. The government says that while most landlords provide decent homes for their tenants, the cash boost will enable local councils to step up action against the small minority who continue to flout the law and
A financial broker has succeeded in preventing a commercial lender from approaching its clients. The case involved Medenta Finance Ltd, which specialised in financial products in the medical and dental market. It had acted exclusively for Hitachi Capital UK Ltd. Under a 2011 agreement, Hitachi provided finance for the sale of products through suppliers introduced