Veitch Penny LLP - Exeter | Crediton, Devon

This year Veitch Penny teamed up with Countess Wear Community School for their annual Christmas card competition, which is one of the big fundraisers for their charities of the year, Help for Heroes and Breakthrough Breast Cancer.

Veitch Penny are delighted to announce that the winner is Chloe Webber, age 10, who wins £50, with her snowman design. Second place went to Faith Bingham with 'the Dove', who won £25 and third place went to Tate Harrison Curtis with 'Christmas Eve', who won £10. With the quality of entries so high, the firm also awarded Michael Bowley with 'Jesus Christmas' and Billy Grinnell with 'Ho! Ho! ho!' with an additional runner up prize of £5 each.

All the children were winners, as they got to meet Richard Logan, Exeter City Football Club first team striker, who presented the prizes with Mark Fowles, Veitch Penny Senior Partner, at the Countess Wear Community School assembly on Friday 13 January 2012.

For the past 10 years, Veitch Penny have enjoyed working with local schools and charities to design the companies’ corporate Christmas cards. Judging was held by the firms Staff Liaison committee at the Exeter office and all were amazed by the standard and quality of entries.

In addition, Veitch Penny have donated £50 to each of their charities, Help for Heroes and Breakthrough Breast Cancer, and £100 to the schools’ charity Urafiki, as a token of thanks and appreciation.

Please note: Our Christmas operating hours are as follows:

• Friday 23rd December to Tuesday 27th December (inclusive) - Closed
• Wednesday 28th December to Friday 30th December (inclusive) - Open
• Monday 2nd January - Closed
• Normal opening hours resume from Tuesday 3rd January

Wishing you happiness at Christmas and best wishes for the coming year from all the Partners and Staff at Veitch Penny.

On 9 November 2011 the Supreme Court delivered what most lawyers have described as a “long awaited judgment” that is of significant importance of couples that live together.
Until this recent decision the leading authority on the respective shares that people own in their houses was the 2007 case of Stack v Dowden.  This had stated that the Courts were able to look at the intentions of the parties at the time they bought the property and imply that they own the property other than on a 50/50 basis.  In Jones v Kernott the Court of Appeal (whose decision was later overturned) stated that Stack v Dowden had not allow the Courts to find an intention of the parties when “none was expressly uttered nor inferentially formed”

I should state at this point that these cases are based on issues that arrive when two people are said to own a property.  Whether someone who is not named as a legal owner can claim an interest in a property as a result of their actions is a slightly different question altogether and, although relevant, is not what was asked in Jones v Kernott.

I recently reported on the case of Tiensia v Universal Estates, a case concerning the Deposit Protection Regulations that was found in the favour of the landlord.

Very briefly, the Regulations appeared to suggest that if a landlord did not protect a tenant’s deposit in a relevant scheme and also provide the tenant with certain information then the tenant ought to be able to demand three times their deposit from the landlord as compensation. The case of Tiensia said that provided the landlord complies with these Regulations by the time any case brought by the tenant reaches court, then the landlord will be let off the hook.

The only question that Tiensia did not address was what happens if the tenant sues the landlord for three times his deposit, but by the time the case comes to trial the tenancy has already ended. If this happened, then the landlord would not be able to pay the deposit into the Protection Scheme, presumably because the Protection Scheme only accepts deposits from ongoing tenancies.

The Court of Appeal considered this question in Gladehurst Properties Ltd v Fareed Hashemi and, once again, found in favour of the landlord. The Court said that the relevant section of the Housing Act only needed to be complied if they are “still capable of being complied with”. What this means is that once a tenancy has ended, the landlord is no longer able to comply with the scheme and therefore the combined effect of Tiensia and Gladehurst is that the Regulations concerning deposits have been watered down to the extent that they have very little effect at all.

As far as I can see, the only problem a landlord would face if he didn’t pay a deposit into the scheme, is that they would not be able to serve a section 21 notice on the tenant (this is a notice that landlords use to terminate a tenancy). There is therefore an argument that landlords no longer need to bother complying with the Regulations concerning deposits unless they are either needing to serve a section 21 notice on the tenant or unless the tenant brings proceedings against the landlord, at which point they could always comply with the Regulations at that point.

The current position

Since 1 October 2006, it has been unlawful to discriminate against an employee on grounds of age unless an employer can establish that discrimination was objectively justified i.e. the act of discrimination was for reasons which were a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.

This legislation, however, also made it permissible for employers to dismiss an employee at or over the age of 65 on grounds of retirement. A formal procedure (“the retirement procedure”) was laid down requiring the employee to be issued with a notice of intention to retire in advance of the retirement date. If the retirement procedure was followed to the letter, then dismissal would be fair and non-discriminatory.

This was subject to a legal challenge by the Hayday Organisation (part of Age Concern) on grounds that this process was unfair to older workers. These challenges led to the government announcement earlier this year that these compulsory retirements would be abolished as of 1 October 2011, and as a result, no new notifications of intention to retire could be issued as of 6 April 2011.

I’m an employer – where do I stand?