By Rob Gershon, HQN associate and council tenant

I was deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Giles Peaker this week. Updates to the ‘Nearly Legal’ blog often brought with them a twinge of excitement but it felt like this was the worst possible outcome of the recent news that Giles was taking some time out from work due to matters out of his control.

I don’t think I qualify as family or friends and I know my loss is not the biggest or closest, but the work Giles has done over the decade and a bit since I met him online has had a profound effect on me and, I’m sure, on many other people. Back before Twitter was a cesspit of extremism and gullibility, when I had about 50 followers and signed in to share mine and my wife’s experience of the spiteful bedroom tax, Giles was one of the people who read it, responded to it and shared it. He instinctively focused on the emotional aspects I’d written about and there was something very powerful at that time about being heard and supported.

This was before I had any idea who Giles was. I didn’t know anybody from the wider housing world or how they fit together. I look back fondly now on the time I spent finding some of this stuff out, but at the time I drew enormous strength from meeting people online and realising we weren’t the only people affected by stridently cruel policy. I spent a lot of time getting to know Paul Rutherford, part of another family affected by the bedroom tax, and along with Paul, Giles, my now firm friend Janette Canlin, keyboard warrior Joe Halewood and lots of decent people from the housing sector we made good running on the moral case for what a terrible law it was.

I would find myself in Twitter arguments on quite a lot of occasions with poorly informed politicians, and Giles’ intimate knowledge of the housing law that preceded and surrounded it was staunch armour against some of their ignorance. At the time I was an unpaid carer for my wife, and people who haven’t been unpaid carers can’t grasp what a lonely and taxing role it can be. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to look back and think I was in the firm grip of depression while the stupid bedroom tax kept being supported by stupid people who were totally ignorant of the effect it had on people and families who were powerless to do anything about being affected by it.

So, having an ally with the knowledge and keen wit of Giles Peaker was powerful and sometimes reassuring. Giles had a way of being able to explain housing law in a way that even people like me, with no experience of its rich history and complexity, could grasp and understand. His impeccably patient NL blogs and social media posts about it were a godsend to those of us trying to navigate it and I’m not sure what we’re going to do without him.

Over the next few years, I started writing about housing policy stuff from a tenant perspective and there was always a warm thrill if Giles picked up and retweeted something. When he took the time to read and repost something you’ve written you felt like you were on the side of the angels. It was validating because of his knowledge and reassuring because he was always human about it.

Conversely, if Giles picked you up on something because you were wrong about it, the best thing to do was to thank him for pointing it out and change your position on it. Not everybody always responded in this way and Giles had a way of making sure that people who didn’t want to learn from their mistakes got a firm but fair grilling in the marketplace of ideas. If you were arguing with Giles Peaker about housing law, you ought to have known you were in the wrong, and his quick, acerbic wit were a joy to behold for those of us not on the receiving end of it.

Giles was rightly proud of his co-authorship of the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act of 2018, as he navigated with Karen Buck (then MP) the political waters necessary to pass a law so that landlords of all shapes and sizes couldn’t let out properties to people that weren’t fit to live in. You might think it depressing in itself to have to have a specific law to spell this out, but it’s a testament to just how crap things can be for renters of every stripe that such a thing is so. The law might not stop every slum landlord trying to be a slum landlord, but it at least offers tenants a route to legal redress for many of the ways those landlords try it on.

While the Act will stand as one of the pillars of Giles’ legacy, another thing he did in 2018 was accept an invitation from me to come and contribute to a round table discussion at Shelter’s housing commission, which had been convened after the Grenfell Tower fire. I had been working with the other tenants involved with the commission to try and push Shelter to campaign for the reform of housing regulation, and until the 2018 Social Housing Green Paper it had not always been a simple case to make.

Giles kindly attended and offered input to the discussion, and I like to think his wisdom and contribution carried through to the final commission report in 2019 where we argued that, not to put too fine a point on it, some social landlords would not change their ways unless they were presented with legislation that obligated them do so. So, his unique housing DNA ended up a little bit in the Social Housing (Regulation) Act, too, albeit uncredited.

A few months ago, a little after 9pm on a Friday evening, I got a notification on LinkedIn to say Giles had sent me a private message. “Hi Rob, did your parents contact Anthony Gold recently? Just checking…. Giles”. My parents had not in fact contacted Anthony Gold, but unbeknownst to me, my brother and sister-in-law had. I don’t think it compromises their case to say they’ve faced some pretty rum treatment from their social landlord.

Their case is a very complicated one, and they had been having enormous trouble trying to find a solicitor to take it on. ‘No win, no fee’ solicitors are not really in the business of taking on cases that aren’t simple, and indeed trying to find any solicitor with the capacity to take on something more convoluted was at the time leading my family members into something of a state of distress.

“OK, not straightforward”, said Giles’ LinkedIn message, “but looks viable to me. Let me see what I can do”.

I can’t quite express the enormity of what a turning point this was for my family. They’d gone from thinking they were going to be defeated by their landlord by dint of not being able to get legal representation to suddenly sharing the details of their case with the person I’d described to them as the best housing solicitor in the country.

I had a few more message conversations with Giles about it, who seemed genuinely excited about taking on the case despite describing it as being “one of the worst we have seen”. I have been very careful in the meantime not to stick my oar in. Despite my one-step-removed involvement with the housing sector, nothing I have tried to do to help my family over the last few years has worked to shift the failure of their intransigent landlord, so there was something quietly reassuring about Giles having personally picked up the case.

After Giles had listened patiently to my brother’s retelling of their long, difficult story and Anthony Gold had agreed to take on the case, my brother informed Giles of my offer to hand deliver the solicitor’s letter to the landlord “just to see the look on their faces”. Giles apparently “pissed himself laughing” at this suggestion. I should make clear this is likely a florid, colourful and not literal description of his reaction, but was a slightly leftfield reminder to me of the joy Giles himself often injected into his serious work.

After all, if you were on the wrong side of an argument about housing law from Giles, you could be sure you were on the wrong side full stop. I have enormous confidence in the team at Anthony Gold who have picked up my family’s case after Giles announced his hopefully brief absence, but, perhaps selfishly, its resolution still won’t feel quite the same without him.

My thoughts and feelings go out to Giles’ family, friends and colleagues, for whom his loss must feel all the more raw, immediate and unfair. I am just one of the people who met him along the way online and benefited from his wit and wisdom. He helped me drag myself through some of the darker moments of my last decade and has offered the kind of hope my family has experienced to many other individuals and families. Even from here it feels impossible that he’s suddenly not there to carry this work on himself.