Landlords to escape legal duty to deal with bad neighbours

Social landlords have been saved from the spectre of being sued by their tenants for failing to tackle nuisance neighbours.

The Law Commission had been under pressure to impose a strict legal duty on landlords to get to grips with antisocial behaviour, which could have led to a flurry of expensive lawsuits.

But an outline of the commission's final report on housing tenure, to be published by the end of this month, is expected to include the duty in name only, without any real power.

The commission, which advises the government on changes to the law, mooted the idea in a consultation paper in April 2002.

Despite calls from lawyers that such a duty be developed, and the government's apparent impatience with the slow progress on antisocial behaviour, the commission seems set to recommend that an "unenforceable legal duty" is put on the statute book instead. A general statutory duty would not allow an individual to take a council or registered social landlord to court for failing to act.

But Richard Percival, team manager of the commission's government legal service team, denied that such a proposal would be an empty gesture. He said: "Councils tend to take this kind of duty fairly seriously. It would strengthen the hand of the antisocial behaviour team when resources are divided up and would provide a focus for those who wanted to hold their landlord accountable for their action.

"It was felt that a legally enforceable duty would risk encouraging excessive litigation, or could lead to landlords getting involved in disputes between neighbours." He said the commission's view was consistent with the approach taken by the government in the Antisocial Behaviour Bill that is passing through parliament.

The bill places a duty on social landlords to publish strategies for dealing with antisocial behaviour. Tenants will be able to compare actual performance against the strategies, but will not be able to mount a legal challenge against the landlord for failure to act.

David Watkinson, chair of the Housing Law Practitioners' Association, has argued for a legal duty in the past. He said he expected lawyers to continue applying pressure: "Lawyers will still try to use article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights [the right to respect for private and family life] but as yet there has been no breakthrough."