See this article from the Guardian/Observer
Flat Justice is recognised as the country's leading expert in Rent Repayment Order (RRO) matters: we have brought more cases, won more appeals and created more case law in this field than any other lawyer.
Results so far:
London
See City AM article here
Click here to read the judgment of the London Property Tribunal, made against Unite on 11th May 2023
Here's Unite's appeal in that case, dismissed 12/02/2024 - the Applicants in these cases have all now received their award: see updates below.
Coventry
Here's the Midlands tribunal judgment in the Queens Park House, Coventry case. With our support this decision is now being challenged as we believe the award should have been over 80% of the rent paid. You can see our grounds of appeal here. Pending the appeal, the later applications have been stayed.
Liverpool
One vanguard case has been decided already in Liverpool: see our blog here. The Applicant in that case has received his award and is now applying for the following year's rent! Many more have now applied with him.
Oxford
All these cases have reached a settlement with Unite and Applicants are in the process of being paid (Aug-24).
CURRENT CASES:
Below are our ongoing cases against Unite Group PLC for failing to license their properties. It is currently too late to apply for these.
Liverpool:
Any student who lived in
any accommodation (so studio or shared
flat) in
the following properties in the academic year 2022 to 2023 was eligible
to apply to get their rent back up until early June 2024. It is now too
late to apply. Flat Justice has submitted applications for students from
all the Unite blocks in Liverpool:
Arrad
House, Atlantic Point, Cambridge Court, Cedar House, Grand Central,
Horizon Heights, Lennon Studios, Moorfield,
Prospect Point & St Luke's View
We are not submitting any more applications for Liverpool.
All our submitted applications are in time, most already having been confirmed by Liverpool council as well within the 12 month deadline. Most of the licence applications were made by Unite around 15th June 2023, with the earliest, as we predicted, on 7th June 2023. The vast majority of our applications were submitted on 31st May. If you signed up with this person/company, despite our warnings, then your application was not submitted in time and you will not get any rent back.
Coventry:
The deadline to apply for a Rent Repayment Order (RRO) at Queens Park House has passed: we cannot accept any further applications.
UNITE has admitted not licensing the property even though it received
a letter from Coventry Council well over a year before it eventually
applied. Submissions from UNITE show that their Electrical Safety
certificate was marked
"unsatisfactory": the council insisted on
remedial works as part of the licensing process to ensure that the 464
students in the building were safe. The Portable Appliance Testing was
also found to be out of date at the time of application. Why had Unite
ignored these works?
An excellent example of how licensing can
help to ensure tenants' safety.
The decision for this case was at last handed down on 11th June -a
delay of 6 months: Flat
Justice will be seeking permission to appeal.
See our blog
London:
Years 21-22 & 22-23: Julian Markham House, Sidney Webb House,
Wellington Lodge, Quantum Court, Ewan
Henderson Court
ONLY for the year ending June to September 2022: Emily Bowes Court, North Lodge, Station Court....deadline for application has now passed!
Unite's appeal of the North Lodge case was dismissed on 12th February 2024. The judgment above was maintained: see our blog here for a link and discussion
All subsequent North Lodge, Emily Bowes and Station Park cases were stayed pending this appeal.
There was a Case Management Conference (CMC) for these stayed cases on 14th May 2024 in which it was decided that the cases would be grouped according to the issues occupants had in the various properties.
Oxford:
Dorset House (claim period only 14/9/22
to 9/12/22) , Parade Green (claim period only 21/10/22 to 9/12/22).
Directions have been issued. The deadline to apply has passed so no
new applications can be made.
The case is in the final stages of settlement.
UPDATES
Watch here for any news on the UNITE RRO applications!
Update 09/09/2024
All
See this article from the Guardian/Observer
Update 28/08/2024
London
The London Tribunal has issued new directions for all the outstanding London cases. Important take-aways:
- The Tribunal will not be holding any in-person or remote/video hearings for these cases. Instead, the matters will be decided "on the papers", i.e. on the basis of the paper submissions both sides make
- None of the Applicants need to attend any hearings, therefore
- The Tribunal has identified 11 categories of conduct complaint which will influence the amounts awarded
- The Tribunal is well aware of the previous decisions in the FtT and UT where the base award of 50% was made. That award did not consider any conduct issues so it is likely that most awards in the remaining cases, where the tribunal recognises poor landlord conduct, will achieve awards higher than 50%.
Update 13/08/2024
Queens Park House, Coventry
The First-tier Tribunal Property Chamber (Residential Property) (FtT)
has refused permission to appeal: this is quite normal. We now move on
to requesting permission directly from the Upper Tribunal (Lands
Chamber) (UT). In the meantime, all other cases for QPH are being
stayed.
You can read the decision of the FtT
here. You will see that the date on the decision is wrong- it was
received 9th August. You may also detect that there is not much in the
way of justification for the decision!
Update 06/08/2024
The Northern Tribunal has answered our enquiry regarding the
LIVERPOOL RRO cases for the year 2022-23. Basically, they are struggling
to process this number of cases:
Update 18/06/2024
The Oxford Unite cases have all been settled, in principle, just shortly before the hearing that was listed for today.
The Coventry decision arrived! See our blog here. We will be seeking permission on behalf of the Applicants to appeal this decision and are confident of achieving a significantly higher award than 45%.
Update 11/06/2024
RRO made against Unite again: Horizon Heights, Liverpool. See our blog here with a link to the decision
Update 09/06/2024
All our Applicants who registered with us before the end of May had their applications submitted on 31st May. All applications have been received by the Northern Tribunal:
We have re-opened registration for those Applicants from Moorfield, Grand Central, Prospect Point and Atlantic Point. This is because we understand that "HMO Enforcement Team" are not submitting their applications until the end of June, when it will very likely be too late. All RRO applications must be submitted within 12 months of the offence ending, i.e. the licence application. Unite had already completed all applications for the other blocks by 15th of June last year.
Update 23/05/2024
Unite has now paid the awards for the 6 North Lodge Applicants RRO. Each of the 6 Applicants received their share of the award on the same day- just in time for the holidays:
Update 30/04/2024
A recent article on the Unite situation by Landlords' Guild:
https://england.landlordsguild.com/article/legal-battle-over-unite-s-unlicensed-student-homes/
NB: of course it got some details wrong! There was no "legal mix-up":
Unite simply failed to license its properties. Also- it's too late for
London Applicants now- but not for Liverpool...if you hurry!
Update 18/04/2024
COVENTRY: Midlands Tribunal issued directions today to amalgamate all
new applications under the lead applications rule and stay, or pause,
all these cases until 31st May. Reason: They have not been able to
produce a judgment yet for the original case heard on 19th January. We
also recently received an email from the tribunal in explanation of the
delay for the decision, being the difficulty of the original 2 member
tribunal panel in being able to arrange a meeting....
The new
directions will be circulated by update email.
Update 09/04/2024
LONDON: the London Tribunal is now insisting on a Case Management Conference (CMC) to decide how to proceed with all the cases stayed pending the North Lodge 2020-21 appeal (dismissed back in February)
We will represent all the London Applicants at that conference and request that the cases proceed as soon as possible & in the most efficient manner.
COVENTRY: Unbelievable. After writing about 2 weeks ago to say that
the delayed decision, from the hearing on 19th of January, would be
produced in a "couple of weeks", they have written today to say it will
be a further 5 weeks before the judgment is handed down! Further
directions will be issued for the pending new cases for Queens Park
House...we don't know when...
This is an exceptionally long delay in
producing a judgment: the longest we have come across.
Update 03/04/2024
UNITE has decided not to further appeal the first North Lodge cases and agreed to pay the awards: the Applicants are awaiting payment :-)
All subsequent North Lodge, Emily Bowes and Station Park cases were stayed pending the earlier appeal. We have written to the Tribunal to remove the stay on all these cases and the Tribunal is currently considering whether to proceed with all these cases under the "lead case" rule. The Lead Case approach means that just one (or two) cases are heard first and the decision then applies to all cases. As things stand, all Emily Bowes Court cases are running under the lead case of flat B403. If the later North Lodge cases and the Station Court case are brought under this one lead case as well then there will be no separate hearing for them. UNITE has objected to the use of the lead case rule for North Lodge and Station Court. Decision pending...
Update 03/04/2024
LIVERPOOL:
Beware of this company that is targeting Liverpool Students: HMO
Enforcement Team. Please see our blog here:
https://getrentback.org/blog/2024/04/03/301/
COVENTRY: Still no decision. The Tribunal wrote yesterday that the judge apologises for the delay and that the decision will be handed down "in the next couple of weeks"
Update 15/02/2024
Upper Tribunal dismisses Unite's appeal in the North Lodge cases from 2020-21. Get the link and read our blog here
Flat Justice has written to Liverpool Student Homes (LSH): we want to
understand why a Liverpool student housing advice service was
advertising Unite's unlicensed properties. You can read our
letter here
Update 18/09/2023
FtT has now stayed the Emily Bowes Court B403 case, due to be heard next month, along with the Station Court case, pending the UT appeal hearing for the North Lodge cases: 601 & 201.
You can read the Tribunal's decision here. Our resistance to the application to stay can be found here.
Update 06/09/2023:
We wrote round to Applicants on 06/09/2023 with the following
information message:
Is this all too good to be true?
We get a lot of students asking this and it's right to be skeptical nowadays with so many scams around. So we provide lots of information and official documents here to re-assure you: you really can get your rent back from UNITE!
- Flat Justice has assisted hundreds of tenants to Get Rent Back in the last five years since we started: see our google reviews here. We only ever received one review with less than 5 stars- it was 4 stars...still can't work out why TBH.
- You can check out some of our past cases on this government website
- Flat Justice has been involved with many important appeal cases involving Rent Repayment Orders (RROs). See the government website here for the latest appeals: 12-2-24, 20-2-24, 30-11-23 & 25-9-23 listed here were all our cases.
- Flat Justice has been funded for its work by the Trust for London (click the link for "All Grants 2017-2023" to find us). These grants are only awarded after careful due diligence by the funder so can give you confidence in our work
- We are often asked to contribute to press or media pieces, see for example the BBC clip on our homepage with George Penny, former full-time employee at Flat Justice who is now a probationary tenant barrister. George continues to represent our clients and was heard recently in our Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) (UT) case (see below)
- George was junior barrister in our Court of Appeal case against Global Guardians, livestreamed here (second bench in the middle), November 2023
- Flat Justice was founded by (then) students so we know the problems you can have with student accommodation.
- We work with other tenants rights groups including Shelter (see here) and Generation Rent: see the latter's article where we are mentioned as providing the data for that piece
- We conduct training with tenants unions
- We work in partnership with many councils in England, helping to enforce their Licensing Schemes, even Bristol....the hometown of UNITE! (scroll to bottom of page to see us as a listed advisor)
- Flat Justice is a not-for-profit Community Interest Company: you can check our company listing and not-for-profit status here
Still skeptical- give us a ring on the number provided on our contacts page. Yes, you can talk to us! But preferably at reasonable hours please.