Author Archives: Guy Patching

Working from home and tenancy agreements

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In times such as these where we are dealing with rapidly emerging realities it can be easy to overlook strands of how society is made up. It can often take people directly involved with a particular issue to draw attention to potential problems, ideally before they arise.

One such problem involves private renting. Whilst the mess of UK housing policy is not an immediate triage problem there is a minor element of it that might be a ticking time bomb problem.

Many tenancy agreements come with clauses in the contract that prevent any business activity taking place within these private houses. Whilst at most times these are reasonable, not rigidly enforced, and signed quite casually by tenants they cause individuals potentially a deeply problematic dilemma.

One can easily imagine any number of office based workers in this country have signed such contracts, based on the assumption that they would never be compelled to break this aspect of their tenancy. Now, however, for the sake of their own health, their company’s reaction to Covid-19, or the greater public health many are working at home. None of these are areas where would want people to be punished for a breach of contract.

Posted in Op-eds | Tagged | 10 Comments
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Recent Comments

  • Chris Williams
    All well and good, but what is a fascist? What are their policies? And are they on the right, left or both? You need to be able to identify your enemy in order ...
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    I'm with Jana on this one. Fascism is defined (Cambridge Dictionary) as: 'A political system based on a very powerful leader, state control of social and econ...
  • Steph
    Great article and a very important topic! To add an important point of clarity relating to Britain's treaty obligations to prevent genocide, it is important to ...
  • David Evans
    Jana, Spot on. Too often people on the illiberal left and even worse many people who chose to describe themselves as progressive adopt the word fascist to des...
  • Chloe
    Exactly Jason ; It needs to be called out on all sides. Numerous videos of Young Bob online being attacked by students who've little in the way of any coherent ...