Welcome to the latest edition of E:gen, Winckworth Sherwood’s Regeneration and Development Newsletter.
In this edition we look at local authority and disposing of land, the end of residential leasehold, the responsible actors scheme, adjudication enforcement, discussing various cases and their outcomes and much more.
If you have any questions, please get in touch with the authors who are happy to discuss these topics further.
Nuisance at the Tate: Fearn and Others v the Board of Trustees of the Tate Gallery
On 1 February 2023 the Supreme Court handed down its judgment in Fearn and Others v the Board of Trustees of the Tate Gallery. The case had been brought by owners of four flats in the neighbouring Neo Bankside development seeking an injunction to prevent intrusive viewing into their apartments by visitors to the public viewing platform located within the Blavatnik Building extension to the Tate Modern.
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Are you ready for the building safety regime?
The Building Safety Act 2022 (the Act), which gained Royal Assent on the 28 April 2022, intends to raise building safety and performance standards in England and a package of new measures have been introduced by the Act to ensure tragedies like the Grenfell Tower fire are prevented. Accordingly, the Act creates three new bodies to provide effective oversight of the new regime: the Building Safety Regulator, the National Regulator of Construction Products and the New Homes Ombudsman.
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Remediation, Responsible Actors, and Government responsibility
The responsible actors scheme- ie threats to stop housebuilders trading if they don’t sign the developer pledge contracts. Are there any legal ramifications here?
Also Gove’s admission that building regs were ‘faulty’ and ‘ambiguous’. Is this likely to open up a legal challenge to Govt over its policy of forcing developers to pay for this?
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A Day in Court: The Supreme Court Considers Disposals of Open Space by Local Authorities
The Supreme Court has handed down its judgment in the case of R (on the application of Day) v Shropshire Council [2023] UKSC 8. The unanimous judgment was given by Lady Rose and is a lesson in what can go wrong when a local authority does not follow statutory requirements when disposing of land.
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End of the road for Residential Leasehold?
Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (LUHC), has recently been quoted as stating that the leasehold system of home ownership is “an outdated feudal system” and should be scrapped by the end of this Parliament.
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The Importance of Disclosure in Property Transactions: It’s Knot Enough
The recent case of Downing v Henderson (2023) has re-highlighted the crucial importance in disclosing the presence of Japanese Knotweed in residential and commercial property transactions.
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‘True value’ adjudication enforcement – Latest judgement goes even further
AM Construction Ltd v The Darul Amaan Trust [2022] EWHC 1478 (TCC) is amongst a series of judgments on adjudication enforcement. Going one step further than S&T (UK) Ltd v Grove Developments Limited Mr Roger ter Haar KC (sitting as Deputy High Court Judge) cautioned against Employers commencing a “true value” adjudication to get around a failure to serve appropriate contractual notices. The message, as always, is that if in doubt, serve the notice!