The Right to Buy scheme has now been extended to housing association tenants. It is being piloted in five areas across England and will be rolled out to the rest of the country later this year. It gives tenants the opportunity to buy their home with a discount of £103,900 in London and £77,900 elsewhere. Right to Buy has been available to council house tenants since 1980 and has enabled …Read More
Minister says 2,000 divorce settlements may be voided
The government has confirmed that more than 2,000 divorce cases may have been voided due to an error on the self-assessment form on the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) website. The error involves Form E, which records the financial details of divorcing couples. The software running the form didn’t take all liabilities into account and so may have produced misleading results in some circumstances. Justice Minister Shailesh Vara told parliament that …Read More
Legal protection for zero hour contract workers now in force
New regulations providing employment protection for zero hour contract workers have now come into force. The dismissal of a zero hour contract employee will be considered automatically unfair if the main reason for dismissal is that they breached a clause in their employment agreement prohibiting them from working for another company. There is no qualifying period needed for the employee to bring a claim. The regulations also make it unlawful …Read More
Deceased man’s bank account frozen due to family dispute
A court has ordered that a deceased man’s bank account should be frozen because of a family dispute over his estate. The case involved a man who had died intestate, that is, without having made a will. His bank accounts containing £500,000 were closed down by his eldest son, from his first marriage. The man’s second wife then contacted the eldest son to discuss how the money in the accounts …Read More
Thousands of tenants now registering to buy their homes
It follows the government announcement that 1.3 million housing association tenants should qualify for the Right to Buy scheme, which had previously only been available to people in council owned properties. The scheme allows tenants to buy their homes at discounts of up to £103,900 in London, and up to £77,900 in the rest of the country. Nearly 200 tenants a day have been registering an interest in buying their …Read More
Court refuses to return abducted child to his mother
A court has refused to return an abducted child to his mother even though he was taken illegally by his father. The court accepted that it was against the boy’s interests to be sent back to his mother and that he had made it clear that he did not want to live with her because of her lifestyle problems. The case involved a couple who had married in England and …Read More
Charities benefit as woman’s second will declared invalid
A woman’s second will in which she declared that she wanted to leave most of her estate to a close friend has been declared invalid because it wasn’t properly executed. It means that a number of charities will now inherit even though it’s unlikely that she wanted her money to pass to them. The case involved a woman who first made a will in 1982 in which most of her …Read More
Some of the main changes to employment law in 2015
There were several important developments in employment law in 2015. These are some of the most significant. Travel time can be ‘work time’ The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that if employees don’t have a fixed place of work then the time they spend travelling from home to their first job of the day should be classed as work time. The same principle applies to the time spent travelling …Read More
Email misusing the name of Bates Solicitors
Law firms continue to be the focus of criminal behaviour with scammers falsely claiming to work for Solicitors as part of sophisticated scheming in attempt to defraud.
The Matthew Elvidge Trust | Fleet Half Marathon 2016
Bates Solicitors are pleased to again sponsor The Matthew Elvidge Trust at the Fleet Half Marathon 2016. The Trust was set up in 2010 by Matthew’s parents and members of the Elvidge family after Matthew took his own life following a short period of depression. Suicide in young men is the single largest cause of death.