Can we use this law

Hi Sue

Yep you are in the right area

Why dont you explain the problem a bit more and im sure someone will come back to you with some help & advice.

I have never heard of this in the UK however, I am unsure on how you stand when a Landlord refuses to repair and maintain your business premises. Why don't you go to the solicitor who dealt with your lease and ask them? They deal with this sort of stuff all the time.

We run a wedding business and had a leaky roof which interfered with our business eg. bride trying on wedding gown, roof leaks just in front of her. landlord is liable for repair which he did do 2011 but by a rip off company who took 4 months to stop leaks after they had done a new roof!!!! they left outlet pipe off so all water from sinks baths, washing machines from 2 flats above came off the roof and all down casading down the roof, walls and outside where our toilet was. You took it your own hands if you needed the loo. After a time the roof started to leak again, which once again meant wet tiles, water running down walls, also had to cancel appointments. Contacted landlord who came down 6 weeks later to have a look. Brought his own roofer who stated the roof was not done right and needed to be re-done. Landlord did get a 20 year guarantee on the roof, but never contacted the roofing company over the new leaks. We gave up the shop as we had tried for a year to run a business with all these leaks. We still had 3 years to run on our lease. Landlord did take us to court on Statutory demand but i asked for it to be set aside which it was as the landlord owed us over

One poor solicitor doesn't mean the rest of them in the UK are bad! And they are not there to give 100% guarantees of winning or losing anyway. They don't have a crystal ball so it's unfair to say that he said you wouldn't win and that makes him (and all other solicitors) a lost cause.

They can only advise your chances and to be fair, he could have done what many do and lead you to believe there is a chance, this racks up costs, and you could have lost. What do you say, "well you said I should have won"?

No solicitor knows the outcome unless it's very black and white or that they were not in full possession of the facts.....which unless you paid him to go through all those facts, and not just an overview, he can't possibly have made a full decision.

I know a couple of solicitors really well including one that deals with disputes like yours and wins a lot. But that's not to say he guarantees to win. No solicitor can ever do that.

Your thread title says 'can we use this law' - what law are you referring to?

Also when you say he has "re-started up again", what do you mean exactly? Started chasing you for the outstanding rent? Or started back in business as a Landlord? Or something else?

Hi Sue

Im a bit confused - seems you are mixing different problems here.

To start im not a legal person, just offering my advice & thoughts.

When you had the first flood, sounds like you had some contents damaged - could you not claim on your insurance? Yes the landlord is responsible for the roof but he wouldnt have known about the problem until you told him. Your insurance would have paid out for contents damaged as a result of the flood, but its not your problem to cover the roof, he would have separate buildings insurance. You may also have been covered for Business Interruption, do you know if you covered that?

Recurring leaks arent necessarily the landlords fault, he entrusted a roofer to do a job & it sounds like the roofer did a poor job, not the landlords fault but accept its his problem to sort, but again he wouldnt have known this until the next ingress of water.

Then you come to unfit premises - thats actually a different problem and thats where you need legal advice as im not sure if you can just walk away from a tenancy agreement, unless you had documented evidence you have been in communication with the landlord, ie written letters asking him to resolve the problem etc and the landlord has refused or not made good the problems you have pointed out.

Not sure if ive helped much, but those are my observations from a high level pint of view.

Hi sorry if what i wrote was confussing.

We told the landlord about the roof leaking in september 2010. In all honestly yes he did employ a roofing company, but only after 4 months of constant emails, and telephone calls.

In the meantime we were constantly cancelling appointments.

We had employed a solicitor who did keep writing to the landlord and we were told we could offset the rent due against damages, as our lease did not have the clause which stated we could not offset. Over a period of 4 months when the roof was being repaired we suffered several more problems with leaks, losing stock and sales. Solicitor advised once again to with hold rent which we once again did. We then had claims against rent for damages and lost of sales totaling over