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14 October 2022 / Nicholas Dobson
Issue: 7998 / Categories: Features , Housing , Public , Landlord&tenant
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Home is where the law says

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97416
Nicholas Dobson reports on the balancing act between housing supply & need, in an eviction case
  • A housing authority obtained an order for possession against an elderly daughter who failed to succeed to her deceased mother’s tenancy after the mother’s permanent residence had become the care home in which she died.

A perennial Last Night of the Proms favourite is Payne and Bishop’s Home Sweet Home: ‘Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam/ Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home’. But while home may be where the heart is, the law doesn’t always agree. For a non-tenant living in another’s secure tenancy may find they need to move both heart and home elsewhere.

This was clear from the decision of Mr Justice Cotter on 14 September 2022 in Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council v Mailley [2022] EWHC 2328 (QB). There, Dudley Council decided to evict a 68-year-old daughter (Marilyn Mailley), who had lived in the home of her mother (Dorothy Mailley) since

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