The Ely riot – Cardiff Council and eviction letters

There is a report in The Guardian that Cardiff Council have been sending letters to families of those who have been charged over alleged involvement in the Ely Riots.  The letters purport to be notices that the Council may serve a notice beginning the possession process, ie warning letters.

This is certainly an interesting – and not particularly novel – suggestion, given that English law has added Ground 14ZA (after 2014) to give a ground of possession where “The tenant or an adult residing in the dwelling-house has been convicted of an indictable offence which took place during, and at the scene of, a riot in the United Kingdom”.  This needed statutory form because the general rule in housing law is that an obligation of the tenancy agreement does not include personal obligations: RMR Housing Society Ltd v Coombs [1951] 1 KB 486.  There may be questions as well about “locality”.

The catch is that Renting Homes (Wales) Act does not have a similar fundamental term nor ground for possession as Ground 14ZA (as Mike Norman, the Renting Homes encyclopaedia, noted here), and the ASB fundamental terms may require some stretching: see Nearly Legal’s discussions here and here. In any event, as Caroline Hunter, the doyenne of housing law, wrote before the Westminster 2016 election, she predicted that under a new government, “the [English] discretionary riot ground will be quietly forgotten as social landlords (even should they remember it exists), will not want to test whether the courts will find it reasonable to evict in the circumstances envisaged by the new ground”.

This will be one to watch.

[PS forgive the slight luvvie tone to this post, but, well, the descriptions are accurate]