Another thought, you could make a Freedom of Information request to get a copy of their investigation report and see if that has anything in it that would help you.

I fear that may be the end of the road for you. It's s209 (1) [linked earlier in thread] and says "Where an escape of water, however caused, from a pipe vested in a water undertaker causes loss or damage, the undertaker shall be liable...". The water company are saying to you that the leaking pipe was not "vested" in them so they are not liable. Theoretically someone - previous owner of site? property developer or contractor who built your estate? - might be liable but from what the water company says the likelihood of ever identifying them is remote, and proving liability after more than 20 years would be difficult even if you could find them and they are still in business.

Probably an obvious question, but if you have gas as well as electricity in your café - I guess you do - are nPower supplying both and do their bills to you show clearly that they supply both? If you have only been there 16 months is it possible British Gas are claiming money is owed to them for the period before you took over the café? If so when you go to court make sure you have the documents to prove when you became responsible for the bills for the café premises, the lease etc

I'm not a lawyer so I couldn't say whether the lodger could make any claim on your aunt's Estate (which anyway could only happen if your aunt died before the lodger). I suspect even a lawyer couldn't give an absolute guarantee about it. The law allows people who have not been left anything in a Will (or think they should have been left more) to go to court and ask the courts to give them a "reasonable financial provision" from the Estate. See this article for example - there are many other articles about it if you search online. On the face of it, from what you have said, the lodger would find it difficult to bring such a claim but it may not be impossible. The lodger might, eg, claim that he and your aunt had been cohabiting as man and wife, or that she had been maintaining him financially. I doubt there is any way you could be certain the lodger couldn't make a claim on your aunt's Estate. If you are concerned about the possibility you need to consult a specialist solicitor. A different possibility is that the after your aunt's death the lodger might claim he wasn't actually a lodger but was a tenant and had tenancy rights to stay in the house, which could prevent you selling it. I don't know much about housing law but I don't believe it would ever give the lodger the right to own the house (fully or in part) but it could take you some time to get him out so that you could sell. It might be worth you having a discussion with your aunt about what legal agreement she has in place with the lodger that would evidence that he is a lodger not a tenant. There have been threads on here recently about lodger -vs - tenant. People don't always draw up 'lodger agreements' with the same care as they do tenancy agreements and that could cause a problem for you, as Executors, in the future. If there is no legal agreement you could tactfully suggest she gets one drawn up professionally.

If your aunt is intending to pay you your 12.5% in cash and raise the cash to do that by selling her house and buying your grandmother's house from the Estate then I can't see any problem in principle. The main issue that arises is that she is planning to sell it in her capacity as Executor to herself so there is a potential conflict of interest in setting the value of the house. The other beneficiaries should be insisting that there is an independent valuation - preferably more than one. eg HMRC, if they want the value declared for Probate confirmed, usually ask for 3 independent valuations and take the average of the three. Your aunt as Executor is under a legal duty to ensure she pays a fair open market price for your grandmother's house (open market price with vacant possession, not with your aunt living in it!). Once the house has been sold to your aunt you will have received your 12.5% of the Estate in cash so it doesn't matter to you who your aunt moves into the house and what their relationship is. The house is no longer part of the Estate at that point so it's irrelevant to you as far as receiving your share of your grandmother's Estate is concerned. It might affect what happens at some time in the future when your aunt dies. But that's all academic and not worth worrying about. It could be 30 years time or more! Anything could have happened by then. And you can't do anything about it now anyway, you don't have any rights in the matter once the house is owned solely by your aunt.

But not relevant to this thread though as OP's car is parked in London

Sorry to hear about your grandmother. Let me check I have this right, you are the granddaughters entitled to 12.5% each of your grandmother's Estate? Who is the Executor(s) of your grandmother's Will? Is her house the major part of her Estate? Who lived in it before she died? Your grandmother on her own? Who is living there now? Is it unoccupied? Is it still furnished? What, if anything, does the Will say about selling the house? Ignore what your Aunt's Will says. It's irrelevant to your question, and anyway she could change it.

But that deals with the broader offence of Obstruction and doesn't expressly make pavement parking a criminal offence. The Greater London Council (General Powers) Act 1974, s15, creates a specific offence of pavement parking in London. The London Act presumably wouldn't have been necessary if the Highways Act Obstruction offence unambiguously banned all pavement parking. Highway Code Rule 244 You MUST NOT park partially or wholly on the pavement in London, and should not do so elsewhere unless signs permit it. Parking on the pavement can obstruct and seriously inconvenience pedestrians, people in wheelchairs or with visual impairments and people with prams or pushchairs.

Thanks. I'm going to write and do that. They hadn't taken my car to the pound, just moved it to the next street. I'm in London and they'd registered it on the London TRACE service, which told me immediately where they had put it.

I couldn't find anything on here about this and wonder whether there are any rules for how much notice a council must give when they suspend a parking bay for roadworks. I got back from holiday yesterday to find my car had been moved by the council (or its contractors) and had a council PCN [put on it by a council CEO] for contravention code 21, 'parking in a suspended bay or space'. It appears that while I was away on holiday the council resurfaced the road and suspended all the bays in it, including the one outside my house where I had left my car. AFAIK this was scheduled road manintenance not because of any emergency. A letter from the council was put though all doors telling residents that the works were to take place and bays would be suspended, but it wasn't put through my door until after I had left to go on holiday so I didn't see it until I got back. The letter is dated May 13th (the day I went on holiday) but I don't know if that's the day it was put through the letterbox. The PCN is dated 22nd May so presumably that's the day they did the resurfacing. I'll check with neighbours whether they also put 'Bay suspended' signs up in the street, there weren't any when I went on holiday and any signs had been removed by the time I returned yesterday. The council usually puts signs up promptly when a bay is to be suspended so I'm assuming there were signs up at some stage, but of course I wasn't here to see those either. Is this sufficient notice?

It looks like the bays in my council area where they allow pavement parking. Sometimes the marked bay is partly on the road and partly on the pavement. Is that the case here? I can't make out whether there are dotted lines on the pavement behind your car. If that is the case I imagine the contravention is because the front wheels of your car are outside the marked bay. It may be a free parking space where your front wheels are but it isn't marked for pavement parking, which is what you are doing. Sorry, not sure what grounds you could challenge it on.

Re: amout of claim, how do they calculate "£165 for the tyre damage, £125 for the tyre" if it was only one tyre? Either the rip was repairable, or it wasn't and the tyre needed replacing. Their bill to you appears to charge for both. Sorry, just realised I'm misreading your post. The £165 and the £125 aren't separate amounts. It's £125 to replace tyre + £40 Europcar's admin fee = £165. Yes?

If you pay for an insurance policy, and then submit a claim under the policy which is paid, why on earth would you ,expect to get the premium returned to you!

If the cancellation cover is the premium for an insurance policy, and if they are paying you back the £625 as a claim under the policy, you can't expect them to return the insurance policy of premium of £74 as well. If you hadn't paid the premium you wouldn't have got the claim paid.

Statutory notice periods are covered by the Employment Rights Act 1996 section 86 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1996/18/part/IX/crossheading/minimum-period-of-notice ACAS guidance http://www.acas.org.uk/index.aspx?articleid=4096

I (not a lawyer either!) also think they are not as clear as they could be and assume they are standard clauses and the various words in them - "effects" for example - have had their meanings decided by courts over the years. The Will drafter has used a standard wording and included the phrase "...not otherwise disposed of by this my Will..." even though in this case nothing has been "... otherwise disposed of ..." . The reason for leaving it in is probably because the Will could have been altered later by adding a Codicil to leave some specified items to someone else. I doubt clause 6 could be interpreted the way you suggest. Personally I'd expect a court to interpret clauses dealing with specific assets of the deceased to be interpreted before the clause dealing with the residue. Otherwise you end up with a very circular interpretation!

It's well known, isn't it, that the EU fuel consumption tests are artificial and don't represent real world fuel consumption? Why are you surprised? https://www.theaa.com/driving-advice/fuels-environment/official-fuel-consumption-figures

I'm not qualified to advise you on what to do with your £10k, but I will say that most advice sites that I've seen recommend that if you have a lump sum available it is in most cases better to use it to pay off your debts than to put it into a savings account simply because most people are paying much higher interest rates on their borrowings than they could get with their savings. And prioritise the debts to pay off so that you pay those with the highest interest rate first (which probably isn't your mortgage). That said, when I was made redundant and able to pay off my mortgage I jumped at it just know that my house was, at last, all mine and if mortgage rates went up it no longer mattered to me! MoneySavingExpert for example: https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/pay-off-debts/

Posting as an information share, not something I need help with, as this comes up on CAG from time to time. When I've been an Executor I've received letters from the DWP asking me to repay to DWP any pension etc benefits they paid out after the date the person died. I always assumed the DWP had the legal power to recover that money. Turns out they never did and I could have ignored their requests! [But note this does not apply if the DWP had overpaid benefits before the person died. DWP might be entitled to recover those.] http://paullewismoney.blogspot.com/2019/03/dwp-cannot-enforce-demands-to-repay.html

From this site? https://www.gov.uk/invoicing-and-taking-payment-from-customers/payment-obligations It is referring to business-to-business invoices, although the page isn't very clear about that, and is summarising the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (interest) Act 1998 and subsequent amendments. So it wouldn't apply in your case as you are not a business. In any case, as the gov.uk page says, 30 days is only the default if the invoice doesn't state some other payment date.

Sorry to hear about your loss. When someone dies it is usual for the Executors to remove items of value (including sentimental value) from the house for safekeeping. That shouldn't mean the Executor who removes them is planning to keep them for themself, only that they items have been moved to a safe place while the Estate is dealt with. Executors have a duty to safeguard items this way and not leave valuables in an empty house. Doing this doesn't affect where the items ultimately end up, that is as set out in the Will. Joint Executors should agree the removal though, each should know and agree what the other is doing. My reading of this (I am not a lawyer but have been Executor a number of times) is that para 4 relates to the house - the buildings and land - para 5 covers all the contents of the house and para 6 everything else the deceased owned at death (eg cash and savings that aren't covered by para 3, or other houses/flats she owned). Executors don't normally have a meeting with the solicitors who drew up the Will unless they are planning to appoint the solicitor to act for them in dealing with the Estate. Are they? Or are the 2 Executors going to do it themselves? Have they been granted Probate yet? If they ask the same solicitor to act for them they will get the Will interpreted by default! In the Will there are only 2 beneficiaries, and they are also the 2 Executors. So from a practical point of view if the two of them agree to share out the personal effects in a particular way instead of selling them and dividing up the cash 50/50 that is fine because there is nobody else with a legal right to challenge what they have done. Just make sure whatever they agree they confirm in writing to each other.

There's a website (in English) provided by the French authorities on which (amongst other things) you can review your offence file to check it is genuine and pay the fine: https://www.usagers.antai.gouv.fr/demarches/saisienumeroconsultation?lang=en And according to its Appeal page FAQ the only circumstances when you can name another driver is if in your appeal you can state either of these two things: "I owned this vehicle at the time of the offence but: I had freely lent it to somebody" or "I owned this vehicle at the time of the offence but: I had loaned it out" Neither appear relevant to your circumstances, so looks like as Registered Keeper you are legally liable. (I don't know what would happen if you lied and said your son from HK was driving but CAG doesn't condone lying to the police or courts, not even the French ones ) https://www.antai.gouv.fr/faq#11793 Ah, the link to the FAQ takes you to the French site only. I've screen shotted it.

Why are you worrying about who was driving? As has been posted several times, in France the liability to pay the speeding fine is on the Registered Keeper, not the driver. That's why the document you have received doesn't require you to state who was driving. It's irrelevant who was driving. No Points are added to the Keeper's UK licence.

It's more than an invitation to submit payment, it's a demand for payment. It's equivalent to a British Fixed Penalty Notice. Identifying the driver is not required. Under French law it is the Registered Keeper who is responsible (according to the RAC link). So you are responsible and are legally liable to pay it unless you have valid grounds for appeal (which, according to your posts, you don't). If you have any doubts about it being genuine you could ask the French embassy to confirm and also call DVLA and ask if French authorities have requested your details. It would be a very elaborate s cam, for not very much money, considering it identifies a road and a date and time you say you were actually on and you say you remember the camera flashing as you drove by! If I were you I would pay it. I suspect that, as you go to France so often, there is considerable scope for getting a lot of hassle at the border or from the French police when you are there if you ignore it.

Ha! Is that all King? I've heard that the government is expecting the country to be overrun with flesh-eating zombies. But that's not the worst of it. In the midst of the disintegration of British society DCAs will still be roaming the country collecting unpaid French speeding fines. Back to OP's problem. It looks like it's a genuine French equivalent of a Fixed Penalty Notice for Speeding but OP could ask the French Embassy to confirm it is genuine and not a s cam. Since 2017 France has been able to get details of the Registered Keeper from the DVLA so that it can serve an FPN. It appears that in France the Registered Keeper is legally liable to pay the FPN so issues about identifying the driver do not arise. Although the good news (?) is that means that points cannot be put on the Keeper or Driver's licences. What's less clear is what happens if you ignore and don't pay the fine. I can't find anything online that explains this, just some rather general references to the French authorities having the power to enforce it in the UK. But I don't know how in practice they would do that. However if you return to France you might well get picked up as you enter, which could be an issue for the OP as he has a house there and goes regularly.