Susan Bright

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Note on Court of Appeal decision in Khatun v Newham LBC