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10 January 2008 / Chhavie Kapoor
Issue: 7303 / Categories: Features , Landlord&tenant , Property , Housing
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Getting one's house in order

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Will abolishing the law of forfeiture make it easier to terminate a tenancy when a tenant defaults? Chhavie Kapoor reports

The Law Commission has had reform of the law of forfeiture on its to-do list for 40 years. Its interest in the subject first manifested in 1968 with a working party. This was followed by reports in 1984, 1994 and 1998. A consultation paper was published in 2004 and this led to the 2006 report, Termination of Tenancies for Tenant Default, with its appended draft Landlord and Tenant (Termination of Tenancies) Bill.

The Law Commission’s persistence is explained by its strongly held belief that the current law “is complex, lacks coherence and can lead to injustice”. This is whether viewed from a landlord or a tenant’s perspective with the possible windfall that forfeiting a lease can bring being counterbalanced by the arbi­trariness of the doctrine of waiver. This has led the Law Commission to recommend the abolition of the entirety of the current law and its replacement with

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