Claim for Disrepair and Specific Performance

Black Antelope Law was instructed by VD, a social housing tenant, to bring a claim for disrepair and specific performance of the repairing obligations in her tenancy agreement after she had tried and failed to get her landlords to repair her flat for over 5 years.

VD's complaint was that her flat suffered from the following issues:

1. Penetrating damp and black mould;

2. Defective air bricks which limited the ventilation in the flat;

3. A faulty boiler and low water pressure;

4. The front entrance door was not watertight; and

5. A defective discharge overflow from the roof which caused rainwater to cascade down onto the property.

After serving the landlord with a pre-action letter and housing condition expert report, the landlord failed to engage and Black Antelope Law was instructed to issue proceedings.

In its Defence to the claim, the landlord relied on a number of different defences:

1. It alleged that VD had not always notified them of her various complaints;

2. That the issues had been investigated and remedial works had been carried out within a reasonable period of time;

3. That VD had failed to mitigate her losses by ventilating the flat and/or cleaning the mould from the walls;

4. Causation - VD should prove the cause of the mould and damp.

The landlord was granted permission to rely on its own housing condition expert. After carrying out an inspection, the Defendant's expert conceded that there were several relevant items of disrepair under s.11 Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, although not all of VD's the complaints were admitted.

After a joint meeting of the experts was arranged to deal with the contested issues, the two experts were able to agree a schedule of works to put the flat back into repair ahead of the trial and exchange of witnesses statements.

As a result of negotiations between the parties prior to the trial, Black Antelope Law reached an initial settlement of £11,000 plus costs on behalf of our client. We also negotiated a clause in the settlement agreement that there should be a further inspection by the experts and in the event that there were outstanding defects or delays, the landlord should pay further damages based on a set daily rate.

The inclusion of the penalty clause proved significant as the landlord failed to complete the works in the agreed timeframe, in fact, it did not complete the repair works for almost 18 months. As a result, VD was awarded a further £8,681.85 in compensation.