Peter Sparkes – författare

How should a landowner respond when a squatter occupies their land? This book discusses the issues focussing on vindicatio, possessory remedies and trespass, but also explores administrative procedures for their removal. In many cases, these actions derive from Roman laws, which are expertly explored in an introductory chapter. Also included is a chapter exploring human rights interventions in such actions. Twelve case studies offer an extensive and comparative analysis across sixteen European jurisdictions. The basic defendants covered are squatters taking over a home, environmental protesters, licensees and former tenants. The case studies include, amongst others, self-help; restitution; competing claims to ownership (and the relevance of registration systems to claims to ownership); adverse possession; neighbours; nuisance and encroachment.

The loss of a home can lead to major violations of a person's dignity and human rights. Yet, evictions take place everyday in all countries across Europe. This book provides a comparative assessment of human rights, administrative, procedural and public policy norms, in the context of eviction, across a number of European jurisdictions. Through this comparison the book exposes the emergence of consistent, Europe-wide standards and norms.With contributions from experts across Europe, the chapters provide an assessment of eviction procedures in 11 jurisdictions, including Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Each chapter examines a number of factors relating to evictions in the respective jurisdiction, such as, the human rights and legal framework, nature and extent of evictions taking place, risk factors leading to evictions and relevant best practice guidance. All together, this book will make a significant contribution to the understanding of the similarities and differences between eviction policies across European states. As the first work of it’s kind to provide an in-depth comparison of eviction policies across Europe, Loss of Homes and Evictions Across Europe will be of great interest to those who are researching European housing law and human rights law and policy. Housing law and public policy makers, and those working within associated European institutions, will also find the data and accompanying analysis invaluable for informing their work.Contributors include: E. Bargelli, W. Borysiak, P. Decker, G. Donadio, R.M. Garcia, M.F. Hrast, C. Hunter, P. Kenna, S. Nasarre-Aznar, S. Nikolic, N. Pleace, C.U. Schmid, P. Sparkes, N. Teller, D. Vermeir, J. Verstraete, M. Vols

This book is designed to complement the author's A New Land Law,integrating with that work in its simplified terminology, and emphasising a three-fold functional classification of leases - short residential tenancies, long residential leases and commercial leases. Rented housing is treated as a unified whole, with particular prominence being given to shorthold arrangements. The book includes reference to the changes to the allocation and homelessness regimes proposed by Part II of the Homes Bill 2000. It also considers the impact of the Human Rights Act 1998, the changes to repossession procedures implemented by the Woolf Reforms, and the year 2000 bumper crop of decisions on housing law. Leasehold tenure is undergoing dramatic changes. The book draws a functional distinction between long residential leases and rental arrangements, based on the registrability of long leases, their freedom from rent controls and security of tenure, special controls of management and forfeiture, and enfranchisement rights.Extensive coverage is given to the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill 2000, introduced into the House of Lords in December 2000, and promising improvements in the enfranchisement schemes, additional management controls, and a commonhold scheme. Topics on commercial leases (business and agricultural) given special attention include the reasonable recipient principle for the construction of notices, a decision on the effect on a sub-tenant of an upwards notice to quit by his head tenant, and Law Commission proposals on the Termination of Tenancies (1999). Contents: 1. Renting 2. Contractual Duration 3. Shortholds 4. Allocation and Homelessness 5. Full Residential Security 6. Limited Security Arrangements 7. Tied Accommodation 8. Domestic Protection 9. Residential Rents 10. Condition of Rented Property 11. Assignment 12. Peaceful Occupation 13. Residential Repossession 14. Leasehold Homes 15. Individual Enfranchisement 16. Flat Schemes 17. Commonhold 18. Right to Buy 19. Commercial Grants 20. Renewable Business Leases 21. Termination without Renewal 22. Agricultural Leases 23. Freedom of Business Contract 24. Business Rents 25. Repairs to Business Premises 26.Business Leases of Part 27. Dealings 28. Running of Covenants 29. Forfeiture

In his remarkable, path-breaking new book, Peter Sparkes takes stock of the development of a distinctive body of European land law, taking as his starting point the idea that methods of land-holding permitted by a legal system both shape and reflect the attitudes of the land owners and society in general. However it quickly becomes very difficult to test that idea when the society in question is governed by an internal market composed of 30 countries (the EU-27, including Bulgaria and Romania, and the EEA-3), whose property systems differ so markedly and which reflect such widely differing cultures. Yet the internal market has already effected a gradual equalisation and standardisation across Europe as foreign capital spreads to create equality of yield."We all become better off by joining a larger trading block but the social consequences will be profound: Brits will need to emigrate to the continent to afford a home, Bulgarians will need to make way for them along the Black Sea coast, and title deeds will be reshuffled all over Europe on a giant Monopoly board" writes the author in his preface, before embarking on a dispassionate examination of the beginning of that process of profound change. The opening chapters are devoted to an explanation of how the internal market has created a substantive European land law. Chapter 3 examines the rise of a distinctive European land law, and the development of conflicts principles applying to recovery of land. Chapters 5 to 9 on the marketing and sale of land focus upon Community competence on consumer protection. The decision to treat land as a product like any other in the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive will have wide ranging and far reaching implications and, apart from marketing of land and of timeshares, other chapters deal with conveyancing, contracting and the emerging market in mortgage credit.The book concludes with a miscellany of conflicts rules which are gradually coalescing and form the elements from which a substantive European land law can be forged. A number of topics which it is not possible to cover in detail (VAT, other taxes, environmental controls and agriculture) are touched on briefly, and the same is true of international aspects of trusts and succession.