Solicitor Advocate Mike Dailly has said the government should prioritise a stronger regulatory regime to oversee the private rental sector
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HUMAN MISERY brought on by a “light touch” regulatory regime should see urgent reform to better protect private tenants, according to the leading Scottish housing lawyer Mike Dailly.
Dailly’s comments follow a landmark case in which a Glasgow tenant secured £18,000 in damages after being unlawfully evicted from his home in 2015.
Dambaru Baral, who raised the case against his former landlords Mohammed and Khalada Arif, was forced into a Glasgow winter night shelter after returning home on Christmas Eve 2015 to find his landlord’s son changing the locks on his property.
The landlord claimed an oral agreement had been made that Baral would vacate the property, but the First Tier Housing Tribunal found it “inherently unlikely” that such an agreement would have been made as the tenant nowhere else to go.
Whilst the landlord accepted they had taken possession of the property without a court order, the Tribunal also rejected their claim they did so believing Baral had ceased occupying the property.