{"id":104,"date":"2025-02-14T07:01:55","date_gmt":"2025-02-14T07:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/?p=104"},"modified":"2025-02-13T08:21:13","modified_gmt":"2025-02-13T08:21:13","slug":"coastal-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/coastal-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Coastal 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The first post on this blog concerned the blockbuster judgment in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/when-rent-is-not-payable-coastal-housing-group-ltd-v-mitchell\/\"><em>Coastal Housing Group v Mitchell<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0In short, it will be remembered that contract-holders who were not served with electrical condition reports by their landlords occupied properties which were deemed by law to be unfit for human habitation.\u00a0 One consequence of that deeming provision is that rent was not required to be paid and therefore not lawfully due during that period.\u00a0 Having made that finding &#8211; which, I understand, is subject to a permission to appeal to the Court of Appeal &#8211; there is a further question of interest to the affected housing providers which is what is to happen either to the rent paid by contract-holders during that period or rent not paid during that period.\u00a0 I understand that a further case raising this issue is at some stage (perhaps somebody could enlighten me about which stage is at &#8211; possibly, if issued, it has been stayed pending any appeal).<\/p>\n<p>That question is also of interest to the DWP.\u00a0 Thanks to Justin Bates KC (h\/t), who Blueskied (if that&#8217;s the right term?) about the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/publications\/la-welfare-direct-bulletins-2025\/la-welfare-direct-22025\">LA Welfare Direct Bulletin<\/a>, the DWP&#8217;s rather gnomic view is as follows:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;11. Where an <abbr title=\"Housing Benefit\">HB<\/abbr> claimant enacts this clause in their occupation agreement [ie the unfitness clause], they cease to be liable to pay rent. Consequently, the claimant ceases to be eligible to receive <abbr title=\"Housing Benefit\">HB<\/abbr>\u00a0and any award must end in line with the usual rules.<\/p>\n<p>12. Contract-holders (tenants) in receipt of\u00a0<abbr title=\"Housing Benefit\">HB<\/abbr> should seek advice on the potential impact of enacting this clause on the benefit they receive.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Anybody with any questions is encouraged to contact <a class=\"govuk-link\" href=\"mailto:housing.policyenquiries@dwp.gov.uk\">housing.policyenquiries@dwp.gov.uk<\/a>.\u00a0 I suspect that there might be some questions &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first post on this blog concerned the blockbuster judgment in\u00a0Coastal Housing Group v Mitchell.\u00a0\u00a0In short, it will be remembered that contract-holders who were not served with electrical condition reports [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":7123,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[20,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rent","category-universal-credit"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7123"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions\/106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/housing-law-wales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}