Phew

The hairdresser problem has taken hours of research, should really have got it sorted sooner, but commercial Landlord and Tenant wasn't covered in any great detail when I did LLB, so I had to do a crash course in business leases before even attempting to sort hairdresser's problem out. Finally came across a very recent case which may well prove to be extremely helpful.

The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) offer a mediation service for business tenants with problems, I've recommended that my hairdresser gets in touch with them to see if there is possibility for negotiation with the landlord. The ruling in the case I mentioned may prove to be a useful bargaining tool against the landlord and may also, if nothing else, save me from the bubble perm.

Seems a bit unfair that residential tenants can take their claims to tribunal (the LVT), but there is no such facility (that I'm aware of) for business tenants, who of course experience just as many leasehold problems as 'dwellers'. It's the small businesses that struggle to find legal help, because any sort of litigation is often too expensive for them to contemplate.

All in a days work

When studying for LLB I thought that the amount of different legal subjects covered (along with their respective spin offs) was vast. However, when asked for 'legal' advise by friends and family, it really does make you realise what an enormous subject law is, you can guarantee that anything asked is outside the scope of LLB materials.

At the moment I have three legal conumdrums to explore:

1) The hairdresser's landlord problem mentioned in a previous post.

2) Countryside stewardship (of all things).

3) Dissolving of a company to avoid paying damages.

Problem 2 was straight forward, a look at the 150+ page document covering stewardship schemes available from DEFRA, got that one put to bed pretty sharpish, although I can't say it was the most exciting thing I've ever read and I do deserve a medal for ploughing through it (no pun intended).

Problems 1 and 3 are the most problematic not least because they involve relatively small sums of money, so any legal solution has to be workable within a modest budget and also because they are both slightly different to any case law that I've researched so far.

Problem 3 originally involved a very run-of the-mill, supply of goods and services, small claims case. My friends took a builder to court for sub-standard work done on their house, they won, but he dissolved the (fully solvent) company to avoid paying out. He's now set up again, under a very similar name and has basically stuck two fingers up at my friends. Due to an oversight, the County Court judgment against him didn't show up at Companies House when he dissolved the original company and everyone is saying "it's not my fault" and pointing the finger elsewhere. There's lots of case law on similar stuff, but they all seem to involve insolvency law, not applicable in this case. I will stick with it until something workable transpires.

Problem 1 is difficult because I think my hairdresser has been given incorrect 'proper' legal advise. I really must get down to some research on this one, but landlord and tenant stuff is very convoluted and not an area of law that I'm comfortable with at this stage.

One thing I have learnt, it all takes up so much time.