My friend Giles Peaker, who has died suddenly aged 60, was a housing lawyer whose work had a lasting and positive impact on the lives of many people.
Qualifying in 2008, after a first career as a lecturer in art history, Giles went from paralegal to partner at the London law firm Anthony Gold Solicitors in just seven years. He believed – and proved – that the law can be used to improve the rights of tenants and homeless people.
In 2005, Giles founded the Nearly Legal website and blog, producing some 3,500 posts in 20 years. It became a public institution, with a huge readership of legal professionals, and also allowed Giles to help ordinary people, guiding them and answering questions. The blog was where he met Karen Buck, then Labour MP for Westminster North. Together they pushed forward the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018, giving tenants the right to have a dry, warm and safe home.
Giles was born in London to Anne (nee Burton), who worked as teacher and advocate for the arts within the criminal justice system, and Geoffrey Peaker, a schools inspector. The family moved to Leicestershire in the early 1970s and Giles went to Lutterworth grammar school, before studying for a BA in the history of modern art, design and film at the then Newcastle Polytechnic.
He then gained an MA in the social history of Art at the University of Leeds, before moving on to lecture at the University of Derby in 1993. There he met Beth Batchelor, and they married in 2003.
Academia was not really enough for Giles and, fuelled by a desire to “make a difference”, in 2005 he made the life-changing decision to retrain as a solicitor, and studied in London at City University and the College of Law before joining Anthony Gold as a trainee solicitor in the housing and property disputes department.
During his career Giles led the Housing Law Practitioners’ Association and was involved in at least five supreme court cases. He was equally at home working at county court level and gave every client the same attention and clear advice. Unsurprisingly, he was in demand as a writer, co-authoring Housing Conditions: Tenants’ Rights (2019), and made numerous media appearances, lectured, and provided training for legal professionals.
Immensely intelligent, he was guided by truth and compassion. Although he took his work extremely seriously, he also had a keen sense of the ridiculous. Driven by conviction, Giles never stopped working, but a home office gave him balance and time to relax in his beautiful garden with Beth.
She survives him as do his siblings, Owen and Kate.
