July 2015

Solicitor Chris McGrath discusses some recent Housing Rights cases where victims of domestic violence and intimidation have been required to fulfil the requirements of the introductory tenancy scheme despite being long standing secure tenants.

Eamonn McLaughlin is one half of Housing Rights’s Housing Possession Court Duty Scheme.  Eamonn and his colleague  Maria travel across Northern Ireland offering free representation services to tenants and homeowners who have come to court to deal with mortgage or rent arrears.   Here, Eamonn discusses a recent morning at court when he met Grace, a Housing Executive tenant who’d fallen behind on her rent.

The terms of the Northern Ireland (St Andrews Agreement) Act 2006 placed a legal duty on the Executive Committee of the Northern Ireland Assembly “to adopt a strategy setting out how it proposed to tackle poverty, social exclusion and patterns of deprivation based on objective need”

Carmel Ferguson, solicitor with Housing Rights, looks at a UK Court of Appeal cases which considered whether the value of a care facility resident's home could be disregarded if the resident's child intended to return to live in it at a later date.

At the end of June 2015 over 42,000 private landlords had registered with the NI landlord registration registrar.  These landlords have provided details of over 89,000 private tenancies.  Using information from the 2011 census, the Department for Social Development suggests that roughly 94% of landlords have complied with the requirement to register.

Private landlords who fail to register may face a fixed penalty of £500 or a fine of up to £2,500.

The interest rate used to calculate how much help homeowners can get towards the interest on their mortgage is falling to 3.12% from 6 July 2015.  It's important that any homeowners who receive this payment as part of their benefits understand how this change will affect them.