Recently in Property Law Category

A group of squatters evicted from the new home of a neurologist and his heavily pregnant wife yesterday (Wednesday 7 September) have moved into a basement flat 300 yards away.

The squatters left Dr Oliver Cockerell and his wife Kaltun's West Hampstead home after the District Court granted the couple an eviction notice, despite their legal team failing to follow correct procedure.

The judge, Ian Avent, said that squatting is "becoming slightly prevalent" in North London, adding "I understand that it is up to the courts to nip that in the bud." 

From tomorrow (1 September) mortgage providers will be able to check applicants' tax details with HMRC before agreeing to lend money, in a bid to reduce mortgage fraud.

Fraud can occur when someone claims to earn more money than they really do in order to borrow a larger mortgage. It has been estimated that the cost of mortgage fraud was £1 billion last year.

HMRC say that this new scheme, which was first announced in the March 2010 Budget, will be "an unprecedented opportunity for HMRC and lenders to work together to combat fraud in the mortgage industry".

Following the recent Government reforms in legal aid, a clause in the Sentencing, Legal Aid and Punishment of Offenders Bill that prevents squatters from receiving legal aid has led to new proposals that squatting should be made a criminal offence.

Currently, it is not actually illegal to squat but Justice Minister Crispin Blunt believes that it should be.

He said: "Law-abiding property owners or occupiers who work hard for a living can spend thousands of pounds evicting squatters from their properties, repairing damage and clearing up the debris they have left behind.

A couple have lost their four-year battle against their local council over their right to continue living in a luxury three-bed house designed to look like an ordinary farmyard barn from the outside.

Developer Alan Beesley and his wife Sarah have been living in their luxury barn for nine years. It was built on greenbelt land at North Brook Meadow, near Potters Bar, Hertfordshire. Beesley obtained planning permission from Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council in 2001 to build a standard farmyard barn.

The structure looks like a normal barn from the outside; it does not have windows, has a slanted roof and is surrounded by farm machinery. However, inside there is a house with three bedrooms, two of which are en-suite, a gym, living room, study, and a garage.

The residents of the UK's largest illegal traveller site have promised to launch a war on the local authority if they go ahead with their plan to evict over 1,000 travellers from Dale Farm, Essex. Much of the TV show 'My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding' has been filmed there.

Basildon Council has finally won a ten-year planning battle against the travellers after the High Court ruled they can evict them from the site. The council is due to have a final meeting on Tuesday 14 March in order to give the go ahead to serve the travellers with a 28-day eviction notice.

There have been travellers at Dale Farm since the seventies and 600 of them live there legally. A number of families later moved onto an extension of the property and covered it in tarmac before moving there caravans and prefab homes in. They later brought the land legally; however, planning permission was never obtained for the initial work.

A group of protesters calling themselves Topple The Tyrants have broken into Saif Gaddafi's home in Hampstead, London, and are settling in for a stay.

The group have fixed banners to the roof that say "revolution" and "out of Libya, out of London".

Topple The Tyrant's spokesperson, Montgomery Jones, told the Guardian that the group contains people from the Middle East but no-one from Libya yet. Asked if they would consider future occupations of property, he said yes, if "they were owned by dictators, absolutely".

Squatters who have been living in a £1million townhouse in Archway, North London, have been given free legal representation, much to the chagrin of the property owner who is representing himself in court to try and get them out of his house.

The group of 12 squatters, who are from France, Spain and Poland, broke into the three-story townhouse on 21st January 2011, not long after the owner, John Hamilton-Brown, brought the property.

As the squatters are EU citizens and are currently unemployed, they are entitled to legal aid. They have put a legal notice in the window of the property stating that anyone who enters without their permission could face six months in jail and a £5,000 fine.

One of the biggest UK high street lenders has unveiled plans to let customers use their savings as deposit for securing a mortgage.

The Equity Support Scheme is being launched by Lloyds Banking Group in February 2011.

The mortgage deal is aimed at homeowners who are caught in a negative equity trap but want to move property.

The Legal Services Board has postponed until 2012 its decision as to whether will writing should become regulated or not.

The Board is also thinking about launching a formal investigation into conveyancing as a result of the high incidence of negligence claims by consumers and fraud within the industry.

It will not be until after the third quarter of 2011 that the Legal Services Board will decide whether or not to approach the Lord Chancellor and ask that writing wills be a reserved activity under section 24 of the Legal Services Act 2007. A post-investigation consultation is set to take place between January and March 2012.

The four-year battle over the inheritance of a 287-acre parcel of farming land in North Yorkshire moved to the Court of Appeal this week. The land comprises Potto Carr Farm near Northallerton and is valued at £2.35m.

The former owner of the farm, Joyce Gill, died in August 2006, aged 82. Thirteen years before her death, she and husband John Gill -- who died in 1999 -- signed "mirror wills", which stated that if one of them died the farm and all their savings would pass to the other; and upon the death of the last surviving spouse, the farm would go to the RSPCA.

As a consequence of this arrangement, the couple's daughter Dr Christine Gill received nothing.

Dr Gill challenged her mother's will, however, and last autumn Leeds High Court ruled in her favour. The court said her "bullying" and "domineering" father had coerced her mother into changing her will to leave the farm to the RSPCA.

Do you own property jointly with someone else -- your girlfriend/boyfriend, say, or your wife/husband or domestic partner? Are you concerned about what could happen to your interest in the property if you split up and your ex- is declared bankrupt? Read on...

Invariably when someone enters bankruptcy the only thing in their estate worth anything of real value is the home they live in.

In adjudicating the disposition of property in this instance, the courts have to balance two competing interests: (1) the interests of the bankrupt's ex- or still current living partner (who may wish to remain in the property); and (2) the bankrupt's creditors (who probably want the property sold to claw back the money they're owed).

Resolution, the family lawyers group, has hailed the recent landmark Supreme Court decision on pre-nuptial agreements as "a victory for fairness and common sense".

The decision to enforce the pre-nuptial agreement in Radmacher v. Granatino in favour of a German heiress worth a reputed £100m marked a radical shift in English law. Previously the courts deemed such agreements contrary to public policy on the grounds that they encouraged couples to split up, and could result in the exploitation of vulnerable and financially weaker parties -- historically women who might be left with children to care for.

Responding to the judgement, Resolution chairman and deputy district judge Andrew Greensmith said:

Former James Bond actor Sean Connery, now aged 80, and his wife Micheline Roquebrune are scheduled to appear in court in Marbella today on corruption charges.

The charges relate to Connery's 1998 sale of a mansion in the Costa del Sol for a reported Ä6.4m (£5.6m).

Following the sale of the property, developers constructed a four-story 72-unit luxury apartment building on the site.

The municipal government in Marbella claims planning permission was "restricted to five family homes". They also say the owners of the land made a tidy Ä53m profit on the development and therefore owe Ä2.7m in unpaid taxes.

They've dubbed the investigation into the development Operation Goldfinger, in honour of the 1964 Bond classic in which Connery starred.

In an attempt to head off mounting tension over the exploitation of oil, gas, and minerals in the Arctic, Russian premier Vladimir Putin has called on the five states in the region -- Russia, Norway, Canada, Denmark and the U.S. -- to resolve competing territorial claims in accordance with international law.

The Arctic zone is home to vast amounts of untapped natural resources, which have become increasingly accessible in recent years as a result of global warming and the ice cap melting.

But as the resources have become more accessible, the competition over who owns what has escalated -- and has resembled little more than a primitive land grab in recent years.