society – BRUCE AND HOLLY

business, housing, Law, London, real estate, society

A Landlord who fails to do this could be fined up to £7,000

March 28, 2026 bruceandholly

Once the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 takes effect on the 1st May 2026, private residential landlords in England will have only 1 month to get tenancies correctly documented or face fines of up to £7,000. This means serving existing tenants with a tenant information sheet explaining their new rights under the 2025 Act. These new rights can include lifetime security of tenure, protection against unfair rent increases, the ability to vacate on as little as 2 months prior written notice, and the outlawing of discrimination against tenants who are on welfare or who have children living with them. For landlords who get it wrong, there may be no second chances. Just a financial penalty.

For new tenancies, or those which were previously undocumented, landlords must issue tenants (as well as prospective tenants) with a written statement of terms containing all the information required by the Assured Tenancies (Private Rented Sector) (Written Satement of Terms etc and Information Sheet) (England) Regulations 2026. The content of that written statement of terms must conform exactly to the requirements of the schedule to the 2026 Regulations. That statement can either be standalone or incorporated in a formal tenancy agreement. The Information Sheet to be served on existing tenants must be downloaded as a PDF and must be issued to tenants either as hard copy or by email but exactly in the prescribed format. To help landlords with this, the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government has issued guidance published 20th March 2026 titled, ‘The Renters’s Rights Act Information Sheet 2026: The information sheet about the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 that landlords and their agents must give to tenants’.

Whilst there is no prescribed template for the statement of terms, it is important that particular care is taken to include within these statements of terms any legitimate non-fault grounds of possession to which the tenancy may be subject. Landlords who fail to do this may later have difficulty in recovering possession even when they might otherwise have had legitimate grounds to do so.

The MHCLG Guidance includes the following advice:

the information sheet does not have to be given to lodgers but must be given to every tenant named on the tenancy agreement
the tenant information sheet is only valid when downloaded from the Government website;
the information sheet must be given to tenants either by printing a hard copy and posting or hand delivering to tenants or alternatively sending a PDF electronically as an attachment to an email or text message where it is appropriate to do so. However it is not sufficient just to email or text a link to a tenant;
the legislation does not require landlords to change or reissue an existing written tenancy agreement;
where a tenancy was informally entered into before 1st May 2026 without a written agreement, the landlord must provide a statements of tenancy terms (see above);
Social landlords do not need to provide this information sheet.

society, Uncategorized

Mrs Brown’s Boys and The Archers

July 20, 2025 bruceandholly

For me, the two biggest switch offs have always been Mrs Brown’s Boys and the Archers. Don’t get me wrong. I love the Archers’ intro music. ‘Dum de dum de dum de dum. Dum de dum de dum dum.’ But that’s where it stops. I’d rather listen to the shipping forecast. Around 15 years ago I worked with someone who actually claimed to listen to the Archers. Really!

Even though I’ve never been big on soaps. I am still impressed by the way programs like Coronation Street and East Enders draw me in. Even when I don’t like the characters. It was the same with the Jeremy Kyle show before they took it off air. It just grabbed my attention. Such a shame that it’s gone.

Law, politics, society, Uncategorized

Concerns Over Jury Trials in Leveson’s Proposals

July 12, 2025 bruceandholly

I’m nervous about Leveson’s proposals to abolish jury trial in intermediate cases and replace them with trial by a judge and two magistrates. It is as though he’s suggesting that either way offences carrying a likely penalty of less than 3 years imprisonment are not serious. But a theft conviction can be very serious if you lose your career as a result. Fair enough if you are actually guilty of the offence charged. That’s where the jury comes in. People like you and me with the same collective sense of fairness and justice. Not quite the same when you are facing an impatient prosecution-minded magistrate or judge who just wants to get through their case list. And what is the point of even electing trial, if you are not going to get to argue your case before 12 people who are living similar lives as you are.

Another thing I have long noticed is the increasing remoteness for our justice system from common expectations of right and wrong. Where everything seems to be decided on on academic technicality. We’ve come a long way since the passing of ‘people’s judge’, Tom Denning. Then there is the secrecy over the judicial appointments process itself. Whether it’s the appointment of judges and magistrates or the members of a parole board, who ignore public outrage when releasing a dangerous murderer. Who appoints these people? I’m sure that I have never been consulted. All that is left between them and us is 12 members of a jury. Now they want to take that away, Why? Because of successive government incompetence when it comes to our criminal justice system. How does it save money by delaying a case for two or three years instead of bringing it on now? It just doesn’t make sense to me.

My own solution would be to move to an American system of elected judges and magistrates. Make them accountable.

society

Why We Should Enjoy Hot Weather: A UK Perspective

June 21, 2025 bruceandholly

I never understand why today it is fashionable to see hot sunny weather as a problem instead of something to be celebrated. As a child going up in the UK, we never had weather like this. Yes, we might get a few sunny days. Rarely above 75°. But mostly, English weather was dreary dreary dreary. Rarely a winter went by with at least one heavy snowfall during January or February, lasting several weeks. Another winter feature was the fog, which made driving conditions difficult. A new phrase was coined, ‘motorway madness’ to describe the vehicle pile ups which occurred when drivers would insist on driving at speed through heavy fog, following the tail-lights of the vehicle in front. In those days, if you wanted hot sunshine, you had to pay for it by buying a package holiday to Spain.

I remember driving through London at the end of 1978 after heavy snowfall and in freezing temperatures.

Because it happened in the days between Christmas and New Year, no-one was prepared to get out of bed to grit the roads. That was a journey I’d never want to repeat. We passed so many smashed up cars.

Things had already begun to change with the long hot Indian summer of 1976 when we had an invasion of giant red ladybirds which would bite you. Anyone remember that? Then in September 2003, the Mercury hit 100° for the first time in living memory in the UK. Wouldn’t someone living in the mini ice age of 17th century Britain have envied that?

Of course a warmer climate in the UK means that adjustments have to be made. I think we are still too much of an ‘ indoor society’, when we should be getting out and enjoying the sunshine, like they do in other parts of the world. It’s why I like to take my computer outside and do my work instead of sitting in a stuffy box room. I’ve never believed in air conditioning. It has never made sense to me for someone to spend money burning energy to keep us in a freezer. How is that good for the planet? If I need to be inside, I’d much rather have a big wooden ceiling fan chug chug chugging overhead

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business, politics, protest, society, Uncategorized

Economic Impact of Opposing UK Fossil Fuel Extraction

February 1, 2025 bruceandholly

Photo by Jan-Rune Smenes Reite on Pexels.com

My heart always sinks when I see news footage of hobby eco-protesters standing outside a court building, waving placards, and celebrating the stalling of yet another commercial project. This time It was the Rosebank oil exploration project, off Shetland, in which Shell had invested £800 million and involved one of the largest undeveloped oil and gas fields in the UK continental shelf, containing an estimated 300 million barrels. And why do our most senior judiciary seem to think it is their mission to wave their green credentials to tease out the tiniest administrative flaw in the regulatory approval process, to send everything back to the drawing board? Who appoints these people? It follows hot on the heels of another court judgment crushing implementation of proposals to open Britain’s first new coal mine at Whitehaven, for more than 30 years. In each case, the judicial mantra was the same. “That the proposals failed to adequately assess the greenhouse gas emissions tied to burning fossil fuels.” And we know that with a government energy minister so opposed to fossil fuel extraction, that none of these projects are ever likely to happen. But haven’t these eminent legal brains slightly missed the point?

Yes – we know that burning fossil fuels causes climate change. Which is why we need to put in place viable alternatives .But neither the Rosebank nor the Whitehaven projects were about burning fossil fuels. They were about extracting fossil fuels so that we don’t have to import them from abroad. Either way. fossil fuels will still be burnt, because at the moment we have nothing else. And of course those projects would have also created thousands of well-paid jobs. So what is the point they are making? And it is entirely appropriate for me to refer to these eco-protesters as hobbyists, as none of them would have suffered direct personal detriment as a result of either of these projects. It is all about the big abstract ‘we’. And what message does it send to the outside world? A Britain which is so up itself that it is prepared to cut off its nose to spite its commercial face. Who would want to invest in us? The next big battle is going to be about the proposed third runway at Heathrow Airport. Even if it goes ahead, I’m not sure that I will still be around when it is completed. But that’s no reason not to support it.

I really blame the last conservative government for this farce. They had 14 years to drive these projects through. But instead they preferred to spend their time posturing about Brexit and their precious Rwanda scheme, as everything else around them fell apart. And they were a government which was in hock to the NIMBY lobby, which is why the cost of HS2 ballooned almost to the point of cancellation.

When it comes to the third Heathrow runway, I’m with Rachel Reeves. I know she’s had a bad press, but I’m convinced that she’s trying to do her best to grow the British economy. Again, so different from the last lot, the ‘party of business’. But even now, opposition to the third runway is cranking into gear, not least from London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who has promised court proceedings to try to stall the project.

Spending my money to fight a court case against his own parliamentary party? What is that all about? And he hasn’t even consulted me. A case of public money fighting public money. How wasteful. But that is Britain today.