neighbour from hell....URGENT

[Dragons Dennis]

Or move and end the problem instantly.

[jackieandwayne]

Aye, another option - move out!! However, its a fool who gives up a secure tenancy these days.

[pentiumofborg]

It's tough staying put while trying to get someone else evicted. Get proof, audio and/or video if you want to fight your corner and stay.

[Dragons Dennis]

It is tough and it is a shame to give up a tenancy. But if I had a young family and was living next door to ****, I would move again tomorrow. I have been down the 'keep a diary' path before. 9 months of hell which was then thrown out of court on a technicality error by the council which resulted in me wasting 9 months and the situation getting a LOT worse, starting with a 'victory party' for the neighbours.

 

Move. Simple and very definite solution.

[Ed999]

Aye, another option - move out!! However, its a fool who gives up a secure tenancy these days.

 

 

You are, of course, correct.

 

However, an Assured tenancy is always granted by a District or Borough Council, or a Housing Association: they have an in-built dislike for Shorthold lets.

 

Moving from one Assured tenancy to another is not quite the same as giving up an Assured tenancy for the insecurity of Shorthold.

Edited June 26, 2011 by Ed999

[Ed999]

I have been down the 'keep a diary' path before. 9 months of hell which was then thrown out of court on a technicality error by the council which resulted in me wasting 9 months and the situation getting a LOT worse

 

 

It would be helpful if we could know what mistake the District or Borough Council concerned made.

 

It's always helpful to know where the pitfalls are, in the hope that experience hard-gained in one case might help avoid the same mistake being made in another.

[jackieandwayne]

Yes but Ed, its still very difficult to get a move from one council house to another etc., it can be done, but it can be a struggle finding someone to swap with. If the landlord is going to do a transfer on special grounds, it means these tenants still have to go through all the rigmarole described above to even be considered for a move. Time they should be spending making a home.

 

It seems such a shame, new baby, new home, and then all this upset, which I reckon could be sorted with a bit of mediation. Before it escalates into the horrors we read about on here from time to time.

 

I shall be completely sexist now - the two males stop discussing it, the two females sit down, cuppa, and have it sorted out by teatime. It really can be done. I used to deal with ASB at all levels, constantly, for years. This was by far the easiest way to stop it - make them sit down and talk it out. Of course making them aware that NOSP's would be coming if it didn;t stop, so it was as well they saw to it that it did stop. That way nobody has to lose their home. Anyway before any judge grants any possession order in cases like this the question will be asked. "Has mediation been tried. if not, why not.?"

 

I hope it gets sorted soon.

[Ed999]

Sorry, I don't quite follow. What's a NOSP?

 

I realise that Council swaps can be difficult to arrange, given that the Council never gets involved but leaves it all up to the tenant. But I never heard of a Council obstructing the process.

 

I've met lots of people who did put themselves on the list for a swap, and many of them did eventually succeed.

[jackieandwayne]

NOSP - Notice of Seeking Possession.

 

Yep, tenants sort themselves out with exchanges, but it can still be quite difficult to achieve. And, say for instance as a Housing officer, I knew it would be a bad move for a particluar tenant to move to a certain area, because one of the family was an out and out rogue and had a beef with a family near to where he was going to move say. Imagine that allowing such an exchange would have a detrimental effect on a neighbourhood. Then yes, i would have interfered, and used Section 17 of the Crime and Disorder Act (may have that wrong - been out of the game for quite a while now - but its this or something similar!) and stated that I did so because "the needs of the coimmunity to have a peaceful environment far outewighed the needs of this family to move to this house". Get the backing of the police, and bob's your uncle.

 

Councils have "social panels" where a group of professionals sit down and award, or not, extra points, to those transfer applicants whose needs fall outside the circle of the "norm".

 

 

Also, I know for a fact that, say a tenant wants to swap from a 1 bed prop to a 2 bed, but doesnt need the extra bedroom, the council cannot stop this. However, the HO will look for any reason to stop the move simply because of the under occupancy.

 

Ooh I can feel the stress coming back thinking about what I used to do!

[Ed999]

NOSP - Notice of Seeking Possession.

 

 

I'm genuinely interested in this aspect, because I used to be a volunteer adviser with the CAB - some years ago.

 

If you were going to seek possession under an Assured tenancy, presumably relying on the grounds in section 8 of the 1988 Act, which of the grounds would the Council rely on?

 

The grounds are summarised in one of the FAQs - Shorthold Tenancy - posession, eviction and notice

 

I've never been involved in a Ground 14 case. I've heard of them, at second or third hand; but the anecdotal evidence about them which has come my way was mostly inconclusive, when it wasn't too vague to be useful. I'd be interested in your perspective.

[Dragons Dennis]

Can we not get a special site set up just for Ed999's war & peace length contributions.

 

My organisation believes in knowledge-based organisational matrix approaches. We need a more contemporary reimagining of our quality monitored innovation. It's time to revamp and reboot our responsive monitored capability. Our exploratory research points to total organisational alignment. It is a tricky problem to find the particular calibration in timing that would be appropriate to stem the acceleration in risk premiums created by falling incomes without prematurely aborting the decline in the inflation-generated risk premiums. Where the combined value of the above payments before actual assimilation remains greater than the combined value of the payments after assimilation, the former level of pay will be protected. These protection arrangements apply to the combined value of payments before and after assimilation, not to individual pay components, excepting the provision relating to retention of existing on-call arrangements.

 

None of the above paragraph means anything either, just a load of BS gobledegook. Can I join the fan club or shall I just get a life?

[Steve__M]

In defence of Ed:

 

Look at it this way.

 

You (and I) are regulars here so have to read Ed's comprehensive (and therefore long) advice many times. Also Ed does carefully qualify everything he says which means things need to be read a few times to fully understand what Ed is saying.

 

On the other hand, people coming for help only have to read it once, so may not mind taking the time, and may understand issues better.

 

Sometimes the minutiae will turn out to be critically important, and a quick suggestion written in a spare moment will miss it and give the poster an incorrect sense of confidence.

 

I say live and let live, and learn to scroll over the repeated bits.

[Ed999]

Oh dear.

 

I'm sorry if my advice seems to always be the same. I realise it's dull reading - but I wasn't necessarily trying to be entertaining!

 

I defy anyone to get any laughs out of a subject as tedious as tenancy law.

 

 

I was recruited to this forum back in 2007, by Joa, on the basis that we'd take it in turns to deal with the enquiries. But Joa has other concerns too, and currently it's just me, unfortunately.

 

When she and I began co-operating we wrote up a number of FAQs. But over time, these started to become out-of-date. Also, none of the posters ever seem to read the damn FAQs! They just post questions as though the FAQs had never been.

 

Probably we wrote too many FAQs, ironically. So it's actually too daunting for a complete newbie to find what he or she needs in the maze of more than a dozen of the things.

 

 

Joa had a background as a housing adviser, and I had a background as a volunteer helper with the CAB, and everyone else on the forum - back in 2007 - were just ordinary landlords or tenants. So we sort of became default moderators in this sub-forum.

 

I'd welcome assistance from anyone with a housing or CAB background who'd care to pinch-hit for Joa for a few months.

[jackieandwayne]

Leave Ed alone.

 

Councils (secure tenancies) cannot use GROUND 8. (Ed - I may be a tad rusty on my grounds and Acts here been out of it for a while, but you have the up-to-date details somewhere I'm sure - lol). They must prove to a county court judge that there are reasons for eviciton\(other than rent arrears) and there may well be a trial. They must use Ground 14 I believe.

 

Housing Associations and their "Assured" tenancies are I believe allowed to use G8.

 

Shortholds as we all know can be gone with the wind in a flash.

 

But secure tenants need to be careful, there is now the option to apply to the court for the demotion of a secure tenancy to a shorthold, which then of course means they can have you out for the slightest misdeameanour. Where did you get the idea that the Housing arm of the Council don't like shortholds? They love them. More control over their tenants. However, the part of Housing where you would go for homeless advice, now they absolutely hate them.

[Ed999]

That's interesting, thanks.

 

I've heard of 'demoted' tenancies. But I didn't realise Councils were doing the demoting, and I've never come across an actual case in which a tenant was being demoted (i.e. reduced to a shorthold).

 

Of all the cases we see here on the forum, 99 percent are shorthold. We hardly ever get council tenants with a tenancy problem. As you say, shorthold is much more ephemeral and hence much more likely to hit a problem.

[45002]

My understanding is,All decisions on demoted tenancy,where made by court county Judge and not some officials from a council

 

Demoted Tenancy

 

The demoted tenancy, introduced by the Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003, enables Local authorities and housing trusts to deal more effectively with anti-social behaviour. It instigates a two-stage regime entitling such landlords to apply to demote an otherwise secure tenancy; and then, during this demoted period, the landlord may seek possession of the property as of right (provided it follows the statutory procedure.)

http://www.housinglaw.org.uk/Dem%20Ten.htm