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Brian Kidman

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As I've said in an earlier post, local authorities that instruct tenants to ignore court orders for possession may be guilty of conspiracy to commit contempt of court and may also be acting 'ultra vires'. It would be very interesting to see what happens if any landlord(s) or landlord representative body decided to test this advice in court. The subject of a class action, perhaps?

From: Brian Kidman 29 January 2016 10:35 AM

The Telegraph has raised an interesting issue. On one occasion, after I had obtained a Court Order for possession, the local authority instructed tenants of mine not to move until the bailiffs arrived. The tenants were in serious breach of their tenancy agreement, had badly damaged the house and had also prevented me from carrying out safety-related electrical work. I told the council that, in my opinion, they were guilty of conspiracy to commit a contempt of court, by instructing the tenants to defy the order, and were most probably also acting 'ultra vires' (ie outside their legal authority). Their reply was, "you may well be right, but by the time you get us to court you'll have obtained possession anyway and your losses will be even higher with the additional costs, so we'll continue to tell tenants to stay put". At the same time the council was threatening to prosecute me for failing to do the work the tenants had prevented me from doing. As usual, the private landlord is treated as 'the enemy'!

From: Brian Kidman 12 January 2016 11:49 AM

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