Can the developer place a cellular antenna after purchase My friend bought a flat (leasehold) directly from the developer in a London estate. There are a few courts in the estate but it is all managed by the same management company which is associated with the developer. The flat was bought off plan months before completion. After moving in my friend discovered a massive antenna on one of the buildings, not the one they live in. However they are very concerned and would have pulled off if they'd known. Other than getting along with the developer, what legal options do they have to action against it? Not sure if it matters but it was bought with Help to Buy (20% of the flat belongs to the UK government) and the lease is for 999 years. There are social housing and shared ownership in the building too.
Providing the antenna was installed in accordance with the law it's hard to see what basis they could either void their lease or seek damages. The antenna poses no risk to health (non-ionising RF radiation is harmless) and you have no rights in any view it may be blocking there is no damage. The only thing that I can see is if there was misrepresentation at the time the lease was formed. That is, the developer knew that there was going to be an antenna and specifically said there wouldn't be. This falls flat if a) they never mentioned antennas or b) the decision to install it was made after the lease was formed.
This is explained at paragraphs 2-4 of the decision you link. There were two proceedings: a claim in the county court and an application to the Tribunal. The county court claim was transferred to the Tribunal to be consolidated with the application, and they were to be heard together. (Although, technically there should be no literal &quot;transfer&quot; or &quot;consolidation&quot;; the claim is always a county court claim, separate from the tribunal application. It is just that the matters are heard at the same occasion by inviting a tribunal judge to sit in their capacity as a county court judge. See commentary on City, University of London v. Vodafone Limited (2020).) In that circumstance, Judge Nicol was sitting as both a tribunal judge and as a county court judge. This is possible because: On 22 April 2014, the Crime and Courts Act 2013 Sch.9(1) para. 4 was brought into force, providing that judges of the First-tier Tribunal are judges of the county court and therefore able to exercise the jurisdiction of the county court, providing that a claim form has been issued and the matter has been listed for hearing by them. Stephen Jourdan, K.C., &quot;FTT Judges sitting as judges of the county court&quot; (January 2019) See also this previous Q&amp;A where this was explained.
It isn't precisely clear which jurisdiction you are located in (recall that this website handles matters from everywhere in the world). But, generally speaking, in the United States, you have no right to limit someone's existing tree on their property merely because it casts a shadow on your solar panels. The installer should have known better. A minority of U.S. states, including California, consider new construction that blocks the view of existing structures a form of "nuisance" that can be abated if it unreasonably interferes with the enjoyment of the existing property. But, that protects existing structures, rather than new ones. In Japan, there are building code requirements designed to insure that key portions of every home get natural sunlight daily. Again, this only applies to the construction of new buildings. I know of no law that gives someone who newly installs a solar panel a right to remove or trim a neighbor's tree simply by virtue of doing so. And, without knowing whose law is involved it would be impossible to determine with any reliability. The property with the solar panel could seek to buy the right to an unobstructed view from the property with the tree, in what would probably be called a "view easement", but that would only happen if the terms were such that both consented and it was written up in a legal document to that effect.
The other answers don't quite spell it out, so I will. There is no law in the UK requiring landlords or their agents to show a property to all parties interested - refusal to show a property may however in some cases fall under discrimination laws, so that might be something you can pursue if you feel the refusal is due to your gender, race or sexual orientation. While they may have to justify their data collection under the GDPR, that is entirely separate to their refusal to show the property to you.
My questions are, where does this put me legally and what are my options? . . . Also, if I want to keep the tenants, how should I proceed? And if I don't want to keep them, do I have that option? Your Rights With Respect To The Tenants If the agency is telling the truth and the agreement made with the agent was for four tenants but their records and document only listed three by accident, you probably can't insist on additional rent or evicting the fourth tenant because if your agent does something on your behalf, that is binding on you just as much as if you had signed them up personally in that manner. This is true even if the agent didn't actually have the authority to rent the place to four people based upon your communications with the agent, because the agent has "apparent authority" to bind you in your agent's dealings with the prospective tenants. You probably have the right to insist that the fourth tenant sign the lease to conform to the actual agreement that was reached (four tenants in exchange for the rent stated in the lease). If the fourth tenant refuses to do so, that would be a repudiation of the lease/contract and would prevent him from claiming that he is a valid tenant of the property pursuant to the agreement reached with landlord through his agent. If the fourth tenant refused to sign, you could therefore insist that the fourth tenant pay additional rent or be evicted if you wanted to. On the other hand, if the agent is not accurately relating the facts, and there was never any agreement to have more than three tenants (as your communications with them and the written lease suggest), then you would have the right to evict the fourth tenant or insist on additional rent from that tenant. But, it might be hard to prove that the agent is not being accurate because it sounds like the agent and the tenants will testify consistently with each other and there were probably no other witnesses to the discussions between them. The Fourth Tenant Might Have Liability Anyway Also, at common law, you could sue the fourth person for unpaid rent during the period that the tenant was actually there anyway, since the fourth tenant was in "privity of estate" with you. (If someone actually signs the lease then they are in "privity of contract" with you.) England abolished the doctrine of privity of estate in most circumstances for residential tenancies in 1995. But, it is possible that this fact pattern is one of the situations in which the privity of estate doctrine remains in force since the 1995 reforms largely apply to assignments of leases by people who are tenants on the original lease, rather than occupants of a rented property who never signed a lease and never received a formal assignment. I don't have the legal research tools to confirm that accurately. But, none of the U.K. Landlord and Tenant Acts currently in force that I could locate addressed that issue, so the common law rule may still apply in this situation. If the doctrine of privity of estate does allow a suit against the fourth tenant based on occupancy without signing a lease, the incentive to even try to get the fourth tenant to sign a lease is very small indeed - you get no benefit at all from it other than slightly easier proof in an unpaid rent collection lawsuit if the agent's story is believed. If it doesn't the considerations earlier in this answer still apply. Practical Considerations All of this being said, there is also a practical consideration to consider. It you try to kick out the fourth tenant or impose additional rent on the fourth tenant, if the fourth tenant refuses to sign the lease, or if you believe that the original agreement did not include the fourth tenant, you still have to weigh the pros and cons of bringing an eviction or unpaid rent lawsuit. The lawsuit will cost you money (requiring you to advance money even if you are awarded attorneys' fees which may be impossible to collect from the tenants). You won't get your attorneys' fees for the lawsuit if you lose and will also have to pay their attorneys' fees if you lose. Tenants whom you are suing are unlikely to be cooperative on any other matter upon which you want their cooperation, and may bad mouth you, for example, in online consumer reviews. Unlike a typical eviction where the rent is not paid, it is very likely that the eviction will be contested, and if it is, the court could order the fourth tenant to sign the lease, but provide you with no other remedy if the court believes the story put forward by the tenant and the agent. If you don't sue, you won't incur attorneys' fees, you can still evict everyone if the rent isn't paid, you can still try to collect unpaid rent from three other people, and you are much less likely to have a dispute with or non-cooperation from the tenants. The only benefit you get from having a fourth person on the lease if that was the original deal (or if you can't prove that it wasn't the original deal) is that you have one more person you can sue for back rent if the rent isn't paid. If I decide to break my agreement with the agency, do I have grounds to do that? Terminating The Agent Often you can terminate an agreement with an agency without cause. If the agency agreement says that you can, you are free to do so and probably should because at a minimum they are sloppy and poor communicators. Generally speaking, even if you can't terminate the agreement without cause, you can terminate the agreement for cause, and the contradiction between their prior communications with you and their current communications with you probably constitute good cause to terminate the agreement both if they are telling the truth not, and if they are not accurately recounting the facts now. But, to be clear, terminating the agent won't affect the rights of the tenant. Suing The Agent If you clearly do lose money because the three tenants on the lease don't pay rent and for example, you get a judgment against them which can't be collected due to bankruptcy or them moving abroad to a place where it is not economical to collect a money judgment from them, or just not having any assets or income (or some combination thereof), and it turns out that the law does not allow you to sue the fourth tenant, and the fourth tenant was not judgment proof, you would probably have a right to sue the agent for the lost rent caused by the agent's negligence in failing to get all four tenants to sign the lease. But, the cost of proving that in a typical case would not be worth the money since this would be much harder to prove than simply proving that someone signed a lease agreeing to pay rent and didn't pay rent as agreed. If the agent didn't agree to pay for your losses voluntarily it might not be worth the time, trouble and risk of not prevailing in that lawsuit to pursue, even if you could get attorneys' fees for your suit against the agent if you won (which you probably could in England). The risks of doing that include paying the agent's attorneys' fees is you lose.
There is nothing in that contract that says anything about 3 months notice period. The 3 months is the legal default for contracts that do not expire on their own, unlike yours, that has all properties of a limited time contract. I would personally see the detailed description of how you can end this contract as overriding any legal default. But as always, with this specific contract in the original language, you need to see a lawyer to know for sure. Your contract clearly states: you can leave your appartment whenever you want, even before the agreed upon time. If you leave between the 15th and the end of a month, you have to pay for that month in full. If you leave between the 1st and the 14th of the month, you have to pay the fair share of the rent for the days you where there. So for example, on a 30 day month if you lived there for 10 days, you still have to pay a third of the rent and the landlord will return the rest if you paid for the month in advance. If you live there for 16 days, you have to pay for the full month and nothing will be returned if you paid for the month in advance. Please note that you need to &quot;hand over&quot; the vacated rental object during normal business hours. So don't go in there on the evening of the 14th at 16:59. And don't try to &quot;hand it over&quot; when you haven't moved your stuff out yet. At the hand over, you give the keys to the landlord and that is it, it is the last thing you do. Very likely your landlord will want to have a look at the rental object while you are there, so they can make sure it is all in order, you did not damage it or did not leave any of your stuff. Generally speaking, there is nothing your landlord could do to you if you decide to leave early. They cannot make you leave even earlier or any other retaliatory shenanigans you may have heard of in other countries. In Germany, such contracts are not adversarial. You don't need to keep it a secret to the last second. If you know you want to leave on a certain date, inform your land lord, make an appointment for the &quot;hand over&quot; well in advance and save yourself (and them) all the stress from doing things last minute.
Contracts contain an implicit term that obligations will be carried out in a reasonable time While the situation is unusual and we obviously don't have the specific terms of the agreement, it would appear that the vendor agreed to contribute to half the cost of the roof repair and your sister was obliged to contribute the other half and arrange for the roof to be repaired. Implicit in this is that she would do this within a reasonable time. Your sister does not have the right to keep the money in limbo indefinitely. It's open to argument whether a year is a reasonable time or not. Similarly, if your sister is in breach of the agreement, the vendor would probably only be entitled to damages for what they have lost; they would not normally be entitled to terminate the contract. Their damages might be assessed as the difference between what their share costs now compared to what it would have cost a year ago - this may be nothing or a lot depending on how prices have changed - and interest lost on the balance that should have been returned to them.
No The tenant is liable if they break a contract: there is no contract here. One of the tests for a contract is that there is an offer that if accepted will create a clear, unambiguous contract. Looking at the enumerated facts: Alan advertises a room to rent in a joint tenancy property in which they are lead tenant - not an offer, this is an invitation to treat Zoe views the room and verbally expresses an interest in renting it - not an offer, this is the opening of negotiations Alan passes on Zoe's contact details to the estate agent - not an offer, this is communication between one party and their agent The estate agent contacts Zoe by email, providing a draft contract and asking for further information in order to complete her details - not an offer, the contract is a "draft" Zoe provides the requested details, again by email - not an offer, just a transfer of information The contract is drawn up and the estate agents inform both Alan and Zoe that it is ready to be signed - this is an offer A week later (having not yet signed), Zoe informs the estate agent that she no longer wants to take the room - ... that was not accepted Further, the tenant is liable if they are promissory estopped - they have withdrawn a promise made to a second party if the latter has reasonably relied on that promise. Zoe has made no promises other than one to negotiate - she has negotiated.