Susan Bright

An earlier version of this paper is available through the Housing After Grenfell blog.

The UK retail sector is vital to the economy, diverse, and facing a number of challenges. Retailers range from multinational corporations to small independent stores, selling everything from antiques to frozen yoghurt. Stakeholders include landlords, tenants, and owner-occupiers. Across the sector, energy costs and requirements for understanding, displaying, and reporting energy use are increasing. Meanwhile organisations face competing pressures to “go local”, support staff development, and keep prices down. Because of this diversity, retail energy management creates a “wicked” problem, where solutions to challenges are contentious and multi-faceted. The Working with Infrastructure Creation of Knowledge and Energy strategy Development (WICKED) project provides energy solutions for different retail market segments. Through cooperative research, WICKED investigates clusters of technical, legal, and organisational challenges faced by retail groups, including those with smart meters and energy managers (the “data rich”) and those without (the “data poor”). In partnership with energy suppliers, retailers, landlords, SMEs, and Oxford University, WICKED develops actionable energy and business insights by combining (1) top-down big data analytics, (2) middle-out organisational research, and (3) new bottom-up data. Building on this interdisciplinary evidence base, WICKED co-designs market-ready energy strategies to fit the retail sector’s diverse needs. The project uses a segmented socio-technical model to explore challenges faced by six different types of stakeholders in the retail market: data rich and data poor owner-occupiers, landlords, and tenants. This paper presents data from three different organizations: a European electronics retailer; a multi-national full-service department store; and a budget shopping centre with 91 units. These cases show that one size does not fit all: the data rich and poor will need different energy management solutions. Smart meters will not solve everything: further analysis is necessary to turn numbers into knowledge. Changes to legal infrastructure (e.g., leases) will be needed to assist tenants and landlords in sharing data to enable both groups to monitor, measure, and report energy use. Additionally, how organisational cultures frame employee duties, behaviours, and expectations requires further investigation.

Improving the environmental performance of the built environment is a ‘super wicked’ problem, lacking a simplistic or straightforward response. This is particularly challenging where space is rented, in part because the relationships between the various owners, users and managers of the space is regulated – at least in a formal sense - through the lease. Traditional leases largely ignore environmental considerations and present barriers to making energy efficient upgrades. Leasing practices are evolving to become greener. Evidence from a Sydney Better Buildings Partnership (BBP) study, Australian leasing experts, a UK commercial lease study and a case-study of a major UK retailer, Marks & Spencer (M&S), suggests an increasing, trend towards green leases in most of these markets and opportunities for improving environmental performance through green leasing. Further research is needed in both countries to understand the impact that greener leasing has on environmental performance of buildings.

Guest Editors Sarah Blandy and Susan Bright explain the background and inspiration for this Special Issue of the Property Law Review journal. They present the results of their 2013 cross-jurisdictional survey on property law scholarship, which sought to discover which methods of research are most common and to explore whether dominant approaches vary between jurisdictions, revealing a diversity of property law research approaches.

The research for this report was conducted using research methods including legal analysis; interviewing decision-makers involved in housing possession cases and observing court possession days. The initial research aim was to evaluate the extent to which non-financial considerations (such as the welfare of children, exacerbation of health problems, loss of community networks, etc.) are taken into account in possession cases. Surveys were conducted to obtain detailed information about case management and the legal process of possession including the amount of advice and support available to defendants at court premises. In the full report suggestions for improvement are made, including a review of court forms, changes to the use made of the rent and mortgage pre-action protocols, and that consideration should be given to whether the adoption of a less formal process would improve attendance rates whilst reducing demands on the judiciary and other court resources.

This article offers an account of the unique characteristics, challenges and benefits of empirical legal research. The authors explain that empirical legal research involves the collection and observation of data through a variety of research techniques, such as interviews, observation and surveys, and how it differs from some of its close neighbours, in particular socio-legal research. While the challenges posed by empirical legal research are acknowledged, this article argues that it enriches property law scholarship by enabling researchers to weave together the law learned in books with the law understood and applied in practice.

This chapter explores what the case of Manchester CC v Pinnock means In terms of the rhetoric of ownership and our doctrinal thinking about property rights. It is argued that it heralds a much more contextualised understanding of what it means to assert ownership of land and of how claims for the recovery of land should be resolved. It is these dimensions that are explored in this chapter

“Shared ownership” is used to provide an affordable route into home ownership. Yet there is a significant problem with the shared ownership scheme; as Richardson v Midland Heart [2008] L & TR 31 shows, in the event of the home “owner” falling into rent arrears, he or she may lose not simply his or her home, but also the equity in the property. This chapter examines whether there is some way of using existing legal principles to avoid this unjust outcome by either; first, protecting the use value of the home by relying on Convention rights under the Human Rights Act 1998 to prevent termination of the “shared ownership” lease; or, secondly, recouping the investment value of the home by using human rights law to enable the home “owner” to retain the equity even if the home is lost.

This paper explains how empirical enquiry of the kind unburdened by the pursuit of a particular hypothesis or strict adherence to scientific methods, has much to offer in terms of developing our understanding of law and, in particular, the traditionally doctrinal field of property law, providing insights into the operation of law that cannot be learned from books alone. The argument is discussed in the context of an ongoing research project by the authors that investigates whether ‘non-financial’ considerations are taken into account during the process of housing possession, looking at both owner-occupied and rented housing. The project is a broad enquiry exploring the extent to which issues other than property rights and the ability to pay are considered when it comes to losing a home, that is, matters such as the welfare of children, health problems, community networks, attachment and so on. The study is not confined to the ultimate decision making stage, when the judge decides whether or not to order possession, but looks also at how non-financial factors inform decisions made earlier on, such as whether a mortgagee thinks that the time has come to issue possession proceedings. Although the study is of possession proceedings in England, and is based around the English legal system, the purpose of this paper is not to report on the research findings but to make a point of broader significance in relation to the role of empirical research within legal scholarship.

This chapter explores the legal modesl used to provide for low cost home ownership and: a) Explains the legal frameworks used to deliver the main LCHO products available in England; b) Explores the potential benefits of home ownership to the individual in the form of wealth creation, “mainstreaming” and security of place; c) Sets out key additional policy objectives of LCHO, in particular introducing and supporting tenure mix (sustainable communities) and sustaining the opportunity for continued use of the subsidy to provide access to LCHO for intermediate income households; and d) Evaluates the extent to which the different products available deliver both the individual benefits of home ownership and support the wider policy objectives.

This is a note about a symposium held in Sydney involving industry leaders and academics in order to explore better (green) leasing practices.

This note explains the significance of the Supreme Court decision in Mexcfield v Berrisford

This chapter examines whether, and if so the extent to which, the processes of dispossessing a debtor of his or her home enable weight to be attached to the importance of this home to this person. The focus is upon what will be called the ‘personal home story’.

This paper explores the potential impact that the introduction of the UK’s CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme will have on a) energy use in the tenanted commercial built environment and b) the idea of the net lease.

This article discusses the complexities of accommodating CRC within commercial leaes and explores drafting responses

This article looks at how the commercial leasehold relationship can be operated in a manner that reduces the environmental impact of building use. It looks particularly at the role of the leasehold contract and argues that all releases can be drafted and operated in an environmentally sensitive manner.

This looks at how the law may come to the aid of those caught out by sale and rent back scams.

This chapter looks at the meaning of unfairness and its inter-relationship with the method chosen to implement the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations.

Collection of essays edited by Susan Bright, with introduction by Susan Bright. Based on conference papers for conference held in September 2005. The conference was conceived and brought together by me to stimuate debate between academics and practitioners, and to provide a reflective look at landlord and tenant law as a whole.

article arguing that small business tenants needed the same kind of protection as is available to other consumers

Argues that in cases of estoppel relating to land the "representor" (A) is liable to the "representee" (B), and that this personal liability survives a transfer of the land to C.

Discusses the Court of Appeal case in McCann v Birmingham and asks whether the local authority's encouragement to serve a notice to quit can be challenged in public law.

Case note

Casenote on Khatun v Newham LBC

Note on Court of Appeal decision in Khatun v Newham LBC

Considers whether victim of ASB can compel LA to take action to stop the behaviour

Casenote on Winch v Mid-Beds

This article reviews the case law on whether attempts to avoid tenancy regulation work. It sets out the approaches that can be seen being used in the cases to determine if agreements are geniune or not, and argues that the approach taken by the Court of Appeal in Bankway Properties went beyond the traditional use of the doctrine.

Considers case of Orchard Trading

Whether landowner should be responsible for bad behaviour of others from his land