The payment and recovery of service charges is primarily determined by the relevant provisions of the applicable lease, subject to some statutory regulation. The general position is that the lessee of a flat is liable to pay service charges to their landlord, which will be the freeholder or, where there is an intermediate lease, the intermediate leaseholder as the immediate landlord. The requirement to pay a service charge is contractual and there will usually be no privity of contract existing between the lessee of the flat and a superior landlord where there is an immediate landlord in between. Where an intended purchase is of a head lease which contains

Limiting the number of bids a tenderer can submit A contracting authority (CA) may wish to limit the number of bids a tenderer may submit in a public procurement exercise. The CA’s power to decide whether to do so must be exercised taking into account capacity, open competition and equal treatment and/or in order to ensure the integrity and objectives of the procurement in accordance with the applicable rules. For background reading, see Practice Notes: Introduction to public contracts procurement—pre PA 2023 [Archived] and The principles of EU procurement. In practice, multiple tenders for the same contract may be submitted in the following scenarios: • a tenderer acting alone could submit a number of bids in response to an expression of interest/invitation to tender, and • a supplier might participate alone in one tender submission, and in one or more groups in respect of other tender submissions In these scenarios

Can a defendant make a Part 36 offer to pay by instalments? With one exception, no. Under CPR 36.6(1) a defendant who is defending a claim and who wishes to make a Part 36 offer to pay a sum of money to settle the claim against them must offer to pay a single sum of money. Note also that for a defendant's offer to be effective as a Part 36 offer then any offer to pay the sum of money (or part of it) at a date later than 14 days following the date of acceptance will not be treated as a Part 36 offer, unless the offeree accepts it. This is subject to CPR 36.18(3) and CPR 36.19(1), see: Can you make a Part 36 offer to settle for a sum payable by instalments? — Personal injury claims—future pecuniary loss and provisional damages. CPR 36.6 applies as much to a claimant who is seeking to settle a counterclaim by payment of a sum of money,

It is assumed that the individual in question lacks testamentary capacity. If an individual has testamentary capacity, despite there being a deputyship order in place, that individual must make their own Will. See Practice Note: Capacity to make or revoke a

This Q&A assumes that the contract proposed to be novated, and the novation contract itself, are business to business generic supply contracts, and are not subject to any specific sector or industry regulation. A novation is subject to the usual rules on contract formation, like any other contract. A novation therefore requires all parties to consent to it and to agree to the terms upon which it is made, (which will include any commercial terms as to consideration or payment of fees). See Practice Note: Novation—why and how to novate a contract, section ‘Novation of a contract—consideration and consent required’. As a novation involves both the transfer of the benefit and the burden of an underlying contract, the terms of that underlying

For the purposes of this Q&A we have assumed that the land/property sought to be charged belongs jointly to the co-debtors. A charging order is an indirect method of enforcement which secures the judgment debt rather than satisfies it. The debt may be satisfied at a later date by applying for an order for sale of the charged asset. The order for sale crystallises enabling the creditor to sell the asset, repay all mortgagees and chargees in priority and repay the debt owed to the creditor. See Lexis+® UK Dispute Resolution Practice Note: Order for sale—how to enforce a charging order. Obtaining a charging order is a two step process:

Pre-action Part 36 offer—not accepted pre-action It is possible to make a Part 36 offer pre-action. If the Part 36 offer is not accepted pre-action with the result that proceedings are issued, if the offer is accepted after issue then no question of whether or not the offer has been ‘beaten’ arises since the costs consequences of accepting a Part 36 offer are dealt with in CPR 36.13. The issue of whether or not the offer has been ‘beaten’ only arises if the offer is not accepted and the matter proceeds to final judgment. At that point, CPR 36.17 becomes relevant to determine both, whether the Part 36 offer has been ‘beaten’ and, if so, what the Part 36 costs consequences will be. So, to reiterate, whether or not a Part 36 offer has been ‘beaten’ is only relevant where there are proceedings and there has been no acceptance

First, it must be assumed that the party who contemplates making an application under CPR 31.22(1)(b) is '[a] party to whom a document has been disclosed' within the meaning of CPR 31.22(1). The effect of this provision is that the restrictions on the use of documents only apply to a person if that person obtained the document via disclosure within a set of proceedings to which they are a party. The second assumption is that the exception in CPR 31.22(1)(a) does not apply, in that the document has not 'been read to or by the court, or referred to, at a hearing which has been held in public'. If

The British Nationality Act 1981 (BNA 1981) requires that, where the applicant is married or in civil partnership with a British national, they hold a document that shows they are in the UK without time restriction, ie that they hold indefinite leave to remain (ILR) or some other form of settlement. There is no restriction on how long that has been held for and you can make the naturalisation application the day after ILR is granted. Where the applicant is not married or in a civil partnership with a British national, the applicant must have held leave without time restriction for a minimum of 12 months (there are discretionary exceptions to this which are beyond the scope of this response). To demonstrate that a person holds leave without time limit, they could submit a passport with a no time limit stamp

Where the parties reach an agreement to settle a claim either judgment will be entered by consent or the parties will enter into a Tomlin Order by which the claim is stayed save for the purposes of enforcement of a schedule entered into between the parties. Simple cases in which one party agrees to pay money to the other will often be dealt with by a judgment. Tomlin Orders have the benefit of allowing the parties to agree to provisions which the court does not have the power to order. The court has a wide discretion to vary or revoke orders

A lease may terminate as a result of merger when both the lease and the reversion on that lease become vested in the same person (Rye v Rye). However, the merger does not happen automatically. This is because in equity, a merger is a matter of intention. See Commentary: Merger of estates and charges: Halsbury’s Laws of England [201]–[206] for further information. The law follows this approach because of section 185 of the Law of Property Act 1925, which states that there will not be a merger by operation of law of an estate which would not be deemed merged

An application for registration of as-yet-unregistered land by way of adverse possession is made to the Land Registry on Form FR1. Subject to two exceptions (that do not apply), anyone may object to an application to the registrar (section 73(1)