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Covenants: hostile to home working?

09 June 2023 / Michael Ranson , Taylor Briggs
Issue: 8028 / Categories: Features , Property , Covid-19
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The rise of home working has created an uncertain landscape for property practitioners: Michael Ranson & Taylor Briggs report on ‘business use’ &  the modification of restrictive covenants
  • Hodgson v Cook is a recent Upper Tribunal authority on the interrelationship between home working and covenants preventing business use.
  • This article explores that case and the tribunal’s jurisdiction to modify or discharge such covenants.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about numerous changes to our daily lives, one of which was in respect of our working habits. According to the Office for National Statistics, despite ‘work from home’ guidance having been lifted as long ago as January 2022, almost a third of working adults reported that they worked partly at home and partly in an office elsewhere, with over 15% working from home exclusively, between September 2022 and January 2023.

This raises a range of legal issues, including data protection compliance, buildings and contents insurance requirements, planning control and the tax treatment of homes which have now become,

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NEWS
Artificial intelligence may be revolutionising the law, but its misuse could wreck cases and careers, warns Clare Arthurs of Penningtons Manches Cooper in this week's NLJ
Bea Rossetto of the National Pro Bono Centre makes the case for ‘General Practice Pro Bono’—using core legal skills to deliver life-changing support, without the need for niche expertise—in this week's NLJ
Small law firms want to embrace technology but feel lost in a maze of jargon, costs and compliance fears, writes Aisling O’Connell of the Solicitors Regulation Authority in this week's NLJ
Charles Pigott of Mills & Reeve reports on Haynes v Thomson, the first judicial application of the Supreme Court’s For Women Scotland ruling in a discrimination claim, in this week's NLJ
The Supreme Court issued a landmark judgment in July that overturned the convictions of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, once poster boys of the Libor and Euribor scandal. In NLJ this week, Neil Swift of Peters & Peters considers what the ruling means for financial law enforcement
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