A decision by the Court of Session serves as a timely reminder for landlords regarding their duty in respect of inspecting and maintaining common areas. Common parts are generally understood as shared areas common to all tenants such as staircases and paths, but which remain under the landlord's control and their responsibility.

In the case of Kathleen Kirkham v Link Group Ltd a tenant attempted to sue her landlord, Link Group Ltd for £92,400 after she sustained an injury by tripping on a garden footpath.

Using Procurement to deliver Living Wage - public bodies are increasingly under pressure to get the most out of their procurement processes, including addressing social and economic challenges.

The Scottish Living Wage Campaign aims to ensure that all employers in the public, private and voluntary sectors pay their workers no less than the Scottish Living Wage.

• The living wage is higher than the national minimum wage,
• It is set at a level that the Campaign considers to be the minimum income that households need to

Prescription is the process of acquiring rights and in particular obtaining a good title to land as a result of the passage of time. The reasoning behind this is that a person who has enjoyed 'quiet and uninterrupted' possession of land for a long period of time with a registered title should be granted a right to it.

There are two forms of prescription, positive and negative.

Positive Prescription

• Land

Positive Prescription provides that where someone has possessed land "openly, peaceably and without judicial interruption

The Property Factors (Scotland) Act 2011 will come into force on 1 October this year and alongside this the Homeowners Housing Panel.

The Act will introduce new rules and regulations for property factors in Scotland. Property factors will require to be registered and to comply with a Code of Conduct. It will also introduce a new dispute resolution procedure for complaints arising from factoring problems or allegations of failure to comply with the Code of Conduct.

With effect from 1 October, the Homeowners Housing Panel

Are lenders becoming more difficult with RSLs about seemingly routine property matters? In recent times, it has seemed to me that the answer is ?yes?.

I often advise clients on the following matters:-

- the grant of leases of office premises ;

- the preparation of Deeds of Conditions for?new affordable housing developments;

- the grant of deeds of servitude and?wayleave rights to utility companies for new developments.

These are routine types of transaction, however, once the wording of the lease or other type of

Is it possible to have an agreement to agree? From the bus in the morning, to that mid-afternoon pick-me-up coffee, we constantly enter into informal "contracts" or "agreements" with others. These transactions benefit from certainty. Pay £1.80 and you will receive a bus ticket. Simple. But contracts can be much more complex than this.

We still see many formal contracts with startling degrees of informality and uncertainty in the drafting.

The question of how much certainty a contract must have to be enforceable was tackled

If you are taking holding deposits and reference fees, is this legal? Letting agents charge a number of different types of fees to tenants, under a variety of names such as:

- 'holding deposits'
- 'reference fees'
- 'administration fees', to name but a few

The current legal position under the Rent (Scotland) Act 1984 is that it is an offence to charge or receive any premium (over and above rent and a security deposit of no more than two months rent) as a condition

Clients often tell us they are reluctant to make an application for guardianship of a vulnerable relative or friend as they have heard the process is expensive and could cost thousands of pounds. In fact, everyone who applies for Welfare or Financial and Welfare Guardianship in Scotland is automatically entitled to Legal Aid from the Scottish Legal Aid Board, regardless of their financial circumstances.

What is Legal Aid?

Legal Aid provides help with the cost of court actions. Usually, a financial assessment is carried out