Tenants not told about planned construction work I have just moved into a new flat in London, UK and there was planned construction work for a shop underneath that me and the other tenants were not informed about. What are my rights at this point? I have to wake up at 8 every morning including Saturdays and the noise is unbearable, sometimes over 80db. Some things might have changed because of coronavirus that I am not aware of. Also, the council will not help at this point as I had a similar issue in the past and they did not really help.
You should contact your local London borough if you wish to lodge a complaint (and you never know, you might get a different result this time). Depending on the nature of work being carried out, and the level of noise, this may fall within either s.60 of the Control of Pollution Act 1974 or possibly under Part 3 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 if it is deemed a Statutory Nuisance Taking the Royal Borough of Greenwich as an example, they say here: General construction work should be restricted to the following hours: Monday to Friday 8am to 6pm Saturdays 8am to 1pm Noisy work is prohibited on Sundays and bank holidays Therefore it seems the 8am start is allowed. As for the noise levels, independent readings will be required to see if your figure of 80db is accurate but if it is, and continuing with Greenwich as an example, it may be over the permitted levels stated at 6.3 of Greenwich's Code of Practice - assuming that the builders fall within the definition of conducting &quot;major construction and civil engineering works&quot;. I have not checked many other boroughs, but the above is consistent with those that I have.
This all depends upon where you are. I am a landlord and I am answering based upon the laws of the U.S. and the states that I operate in. First things first. You are not the property owner. While this does not limit the answer, it is a factor. You do not have the right to the property even if you have a key and the permission of the tenant. You are not the property owner, do not represent the property owner nor the tenant, and by contract do not have legal rights to the apartment. It does put you in a different situation. As a landlord, it is against the law for me to provide access to a tenants apartment to anyone without authorization. This, of course, precludes emergencies such as welfare checks. In the case of the police, a warrant is required or a form that the police fill out that allows the police to gain access. This would be used in cases such as when a spouse requires the recovery of personal property during a domestic dispute. A judges order is not always possible in these cases. These are often limited cases and the form absolves the landlord of liability even in cases where the police act incorrectly. So without a warrant or a form that certifies any lawful request, anyone including the landlord can be arrested for a crime. For your situation, a quick call to the landlord would have been appropriate. Without a warrant or certification, the police still had options including waiting for the person in question to either leave or return to the apartment or even request a warrant by phone. Often, the warrant, once signed by the judge, can be read over the phone. Any landlord should always have a paper copy provided within minutes since some cruisers will have a printer and can print the warrant. Your refusal appears to be legal. However, in the future, you can ask for a copy of the warrant that you provide the landlord. I do not wish to paint a negative image of the police who do the hard work that most people will never take on, they are after all heros, however, some do not know the law perfectly well especially tenant landlord law. As well, some will try and get away with skirting the law trying to get an important job done. It does happen. I hired a lawyer just last week for an illegal request unrelated to the question here. Addressing the OPs comment: Hello, I believe I misstated the situation a bit in that the locked door in question was for the apartment building and not a tenet's apartment itself. I have edited my question. Does this change anything? Technically, this does not change much of anything, however, the request by the police can be seen as a reasonable one. They just may want to talk to the individual which is reasonable. In this case, I might have let them in if the access I was giving them was to a common space such as a hallway. In this case, the outer door locks are only to keep Intruders from entering the building and not meant to restrict access for valid purposes. Are you in trouble? I would say no. If anyone asks, you can give reasonable arguments for your situation. However, the next time, consider what I have written here. The police have a tough enough time doing their jobs. If you can help and stay within the proper boundaries of what the law allows, that would be best.
You can take action against the shop directly under the tort of nuisance. The available remedies are damages to compensate for interference with your property rights, and injunction to require the defendant to cease the activity which is causing the nuisance. You could also bring a judicial review action against the council if they refuse to investigate the noise. In England, Wales, and Scotland this would be based on Section 79(1)(g) of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 which defines &quot;noise emitted from premises so as to be prejudicial to health or a nuisance&quot; to be a &quot;statutory nuisance&quot;. Section 79 places an obligation on a local authority to &quot;take such steps as are reasonably practicable to investigate&quot; a complaint made by a person living within its area. Section 80(1) requires that &quot;where a local authority is satisfied that a statutory nuisance exists [it] shall service [an abatement notice]&quot;. Section section 80(4) provides that it is an offence to contravene an abatement notice. Torts and judicial review are complex areas of law and you should seek legal advice if you intend to pursue either of these routes. The limitation period for judicial review is relatively short (3 months per CPR 54.5(1)), so if you are seeking legal advice, you should do so quickly if you have already approached the council.
Because an owner cannot tell another owner what they can and can't do with their own property The quoted paragraph clearly sets out some of the things the leasehold arrangement allows: &quot;... set out the rights and responsibilities of the residents, such as funding the maintenance of the building and placing restrictions on antisocial behavior.&quot; When you own land, you own it; and no one can tell you what you can and can't do with it, not even your co-owners (governments excepted). Want to run chickens? Sure: it's your land. Spinal Tap your stereo to 11 at 2 am? Sure: it's your land. Become a hoarder? Sure, it's your land. When there's a single dwelling on the land, none of that is a problem. When there are multiple dwellings on the land, as in a block of flats (apartments for the Americans among us) then some of these are likely to be problematical. But they aren't problems the law cares about because you all own the property. Different common law jurisdictions have arrived at different solutions to this problem but the UK has particular difficulties because people have been owning land there for a long time. A lot longer than in the USA, Australia or New Zealand. This is quite an elegant solution: all the owners own the land but each of them have a lease over their own flat and that is a contract the law will enforce.
I would assume that the seller ('Transferor') still owned numbers 7 and 11 at the time of the sale. If so, this clause means that the owners of 7 and 11 (now and in the future) have a right of way on the path coloured blue on the plan. The land still belongs to number 9, but the owners cannot build on it so as to block the path. (As mckenzm comments, "on foot only" is an important qualification; the neighbours do not have a right to install utilities under the path, and the owner can put in obstacles that prevent bringing cycles down it).
Landlord-tenant laws are state-specific, and given the number of states it's impractical to scan all of the laws, but based on a reading of a handful of such laws I doubt that there is any law requiring landlords to pay the oil for a rented house. (The matter would be different if there was a multi-unit building with no individual control over temperature, thus pooled fuel usage). It's not clear to me what you assumed the agreement means, where it says "N/A". Perhaps you believed at the time that the place had a different heating system, and you relied on that assumption. In that case, you might be able to go to court and have the contract voided, and you could pick another place to live. If the "options" are specified so that some things are assigned to tenant, some to landlord, and some are N/A, that would especially lead to the reasonable belief that there was no oil heat in the house. But if the only indications were "landlord" versus "n/a", then you could interpret "n/a" as meaning "not the responsibility of the landlord". Analogously, if the agreement only lists "tenant" and "n/a" then a reasonable interpretation would be that this means "the tenant pays" versus "the tenant does not pay". This reasoning would also have to survive the alternative interpretation that the tenant pays for everything, except that n/a means "there isn't one of these". In other words, the meaning of the term might be determinable from the overall context of what's in the agreement. Since the house does not come with a full tank (as with car rentals), the question of what to do with the residual oil at the end of the lease should also be specified. Unlike gas or electric, you're not just paying for actual consumption, you're paying for potential consumption, and you would have an interest in the remaining half-tank at the end of the lease. You could just walk away from that investment (pumping it out and taking it with you could be illegal, since the stuff is kind of a contaminant), or you could have an agreement where the landlord buys the oil back from you, but that should be specified in the agreement (and I assume it isn't). This kind of consideration could support a claim that you reasonably believed that there was no oil system (if there were, there would be some term relating to your interest in the residual oil), or even a belief that the landlord would pay the cost of the oil (since he ultimately gets the remaining oil at the end of the lease). You attorney (hint) should advise you how to approach this.
The only avenue for tenant liability would be if the tenant is responsible for the damage. The courts have not assigned responsibility for damage resulting from other people's disagreement with a political expression to the person expressing the viewpoint. You are generally free to peacefully express yourself, and as a renter this would be part of your right of "quiet enjoyment of the premise". If there is a lease condition that says "no political signs", then maybe that's a violation of the contract, but that might also be an illegal term in your state or city (under landlord-tenant laws). Since you have the right to express your opinion, the courts must respect that right and not deem that engaging in political expression negates your other rights. In general, if someone commits a crime, the law does not say "but you take the blame if you express your political opinion".
Your problem is not just that you don't have a working stopcock, but that you now know that you don't have one. Of course it's not illegal by itself, the problem is what is going to happen if you have an insurance case. Your home insurance most likely has to pay for accidental damage. But any damage that would be caused by not being able to close the stopcock, when you knew it wasn't working, they could claim that this is due to gross negligence. Whether they would succeed with that claim or not, I don't know, but fixing the stopcock seems to be a much, much cheaper solution. PS. Seems I made a wrong assumption here - that it was your home, owned by you. The same reasons that would have made it a good idea for you to fix the stopcock obviously make it a good idea for the landlord as well. So I would make sure that you tell the landlord as soon as possible. If something goes wrong, and the insurance doesn't pay, your landlord would be responsible for the damage. Whether it's legal to not fix the stopcock - that's a different matter. I thought you were the owner. You would have endangered yourself and your property. Nothing illegal with that. But with the landlord it's different; he wouldn't be endangering himself but someone else's property.