A HIGH street law network has applied its legal expertise to a series of summertime questions, with a humorous twist.

Despite the sunshine, summer and the holidays do not always go smoothly. You do not want to worry when you should be enjoying the season, so QualitySolicitors has done the worrying for you, with a series of humorous but helpful scenarios.

  • Al fresco nuisance

With British summer consisting of the three days a year that you can enjoy your garden without having to wear waders, what happens when the party animals next door have the same idea?

Imagine a warm evening in mid-July and you and your partner decide to eat dinner in the garden with a glass of wine and enjoy the weather after a long hard day at work. However, to your annoyance, your neighbours have had the same idea… with 20 of their friends, some loud speakers and some of the latest dance hits. The problem is, it is Wednesday night and this is the third night this week they have had this idea.

Do you put up with the music and shouting until the early hours, when you know that you have that 9am conference call and the children are trying to sleep? Although the short answer is "no", the manner in which you handle the situation will make all the difference.

Firstly, have you spoken to the neighbours (once their hangovers have worn off)? They might not realise that they are being a nuisance. Choose your timing well, and perhaps invite them around for a coffee to discuss it.

If this does not work, you could consider making a complaint to the local Environmental Health department and request that an Environmental Health Officer comes out to assess the neighbours’ decibel levels. They will be able to advise you further on the action that they can take.

If you believe that the neighbours' behaviour is of a more anti-social level, you could report the matter to the police. You may need to be a witness if they take the matter to court, and you will need to consider whether you are prepared to do this.

You could try going through mediation. This may help as a third party who is independent will be able to try and help both parties understand the other’s point of view and come to a mutual understanding.

Are your neighbours tenants? You could try and find out who their landlord is, to see if they can help to sort the matter out. Most landlords want as few problems with their tenants as possible, especially where noise is concerned, and a word from them might have the required outcome.

If all else fails, you could speak to a solicitor about writing to your neighbours, setting out the issues and suggesting a way for both of you to move forward in the most amicable way possible. If this makes no difference, you may have to consider making an application through the courts to obtain an order, preventing them from causing a nuisance, putting an end to their party.

  • Did you spend too much of your holiday at the airport?

Holidays are a time for relaxation and for getting away from it all but what happens when your flight is delayed and you’re left sitting in Gatwick wondering if you’ll ever leave?

You’ve just arrived at the airport and if your overweight baggage charge and three hyperactive screaming children aren’t enough to put your stress levels through the roof, you learn that your flight has been delayed. All you want to do is relax by the pool, soaking up the sun and sipping on an ice-cold drink, but now you’ve been told that your flight won’t even board for another five hours!

However, thanks to the EU Directive 261/2004, you are able to claim up to £480 in compensation for the delayed flight. This amount is dependent upon the delay length and the distance travelled on your flight. For example, if you are flying to Rome from Heathrow Airport and your flight is delayed by three hours, you could be entitled to receive the lower amount of £100 compensation. If your flight from Heathrow to Los Angeles is over four hours delayed, however, you could be entitled to receive the highest rate of compensation of £480. The only exception to the EU Directive is if the delay has been caused by an extraordinary circumstance which is out of the airline’s control.

In addition to this, the compensation that you could be entitled to recover is per person, not per family. Therefore, if you are jetting to St Tropez with your husband and three children, you could be entitled up to £500 in compensation.

Apart from money compensation, if the flight is over two hours delayed then you are entitled to refreshments provided by the airline, and if the flight is moved to a different day than the expected date of departure, then you are entitled to receive accommodation paid for by the airline.

If you have experienced a delay, the first thing you need to do (when you are back from holiday, rather than spending the whole holiday on the phone to the airline getting wound up) is to either telephone or write to the airline (or alternatively, have a member of our Dispute Resolution team, to write to the airline to submit a written complaint) explaining the problems that have occurred and that you believe that you are entitled to compensation.

The airline could still refuse to offer any form of compensation at this stage. The next best step would be to make a complaint to the relevant regulator, which, if your flight is departing from the UK, would be the UK Civil Aviation Authority.

If you still do not receive any joy from the relevant regulator, the last attempt to claim compensation that you believe that you’re entitled to is to bring a claim against the airline in your local County Court.

Of course, a lot of hassle can be reduced if before you check online before you leave home as to whether your flight is scheduled to depart on time or how long it is likely to be delayed.

  • The temperature in the office is rising. How hot is too hot?

Summer in Britain is a changeable time - either it’s pouring with rain or we’re experiencing another 25c ‘heatwave’, with weather presenters warning anyone over the age of 50 to stay locked inside with a fan and a cold shower, for fear of heatstroke.

The workplace in the summer is a nightmare - glass windows turn the office into a greenhouse, and while you are covering for your colleagues who are on holiday, stretched out on beaches across the globe, you are locked inside this oven, shrivelling like a raisin from lack of hydration and feeling like you are going to pass out from heat exhaustion.

What pressure can you apply on your boss to install air-conditioning, or better still, send you home for the afternoon? Unfortunately for you, there is no law on what the minimum or maximum workplace temperature should be. So, what can you do?

The best thing to do in this scenario would be to talk to your boss, explaining your sweaty predicament and asking whether they could provide you with a fan or hire in some portable coolers. If you are feeling the heat, it’s likely that your colleagues will feel the same, meaning that you might have some support in your request.

Having said that there are no hard and fast rules on workplace temperature - an indoor workplace should be at a ‘reasonable’ temperature, and although the definition of what this is varies widely between different people, the HSE states that this should be at least 16c. The health and safety of employees should always be considered when taking into account the type of work being carried out, which means that you shouldn’t have to spend your days feeling like you’ve taken an unwelcome summer holiday to the Sahara desert.

  • Crop tops and flip-flops or sober suit and tie?

It’s another sweltering day; the sky is blue, the smell of sun cream is in the air… and you’re on your way to the office wearing a black suit. To you, this seems unfair. Why does your boss not allow employees to dress in shorts and flip flops?

However rebellious and angst-ridden you feel, you decide against donning your Speedos and best sandals, as you feel that your colleagues probably won’t appreciate seeing your glowing white chest which hasn’t seen the sun for over a year, and head into work wearing your usual attire, silently cursing the world and everyone in it.

While you slowly melt in the office, you question whether it would be possible to change the dress code to something slightly more appropriate for the heat. For five minutes, you feel that you are going to be the catalyst for this change, leading your colleagues to shirtless victory… but this all comes crashing to a halt when you find yourself going to see your boss about this, wiping sweat from your brow while mumbling your predicament, after which he informs you icily that ‘our clients do not wish to see your hairy legs, or your Hawaiian shirt collection’.

The issue is, most company dress codes state that employees should always be dressed appropriately to portray a professional image, and it is up to the boss whether to enforce this. Unfortunately, this does not always take into account what we want to wear in hot weather. Common sense should always prevail, and, although it might seem like a good idea at the time to dress like you’re on the beach, in the workplace this might not be practical.

You could discuss with your boss what you could wear to make you cooler while keeping a professional image, such as wearing short-sleeved shirts, but there is no legislation to force them to change their dress code. Having said this, you could make a claim if your boss doesn’t take into consideration religious and cultural dress. In this instance Baywatch Dreamer does not count as a religion.

  • Regulations for beach volleyball stipulate a maximum size for bikinis. Does public decency require a minimum size, even on the beach?

It’s an urban myth that British middle classes used to cover piano legs to avoid moral outrage. But, we’re probably a lot more open-minded nowadays than our Victorian ancestors ever were, particularly when it comes to ‘indecent exposure’. In 1934 Cole Porter wrote of olden days when even “a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking”. One of the complexities of what constitutes ‘indecent exposure’ over the years has been, as Mr Porter alluded to, that it often means different things to different people in different places at different times.

But after cultural revolution of the ‘swinging’ 1960s, and successive generations seemingly trying to out-shock the previous one, our strict sense of taste and decency has undoubtedly softened. Moral indignation still resurfaces occasionally, thanks to ‘scandalous’ trends – think miniskirts, public streaking, skinny dipping, nudist beaches, lapdancing clubs, the internet, and video-sharing sites. The law has undoubtedly had to work hard to reflect evolving public taste.

For example, the bikini caused all kinds of open-mouthed nudging and winking when it first became the de rigeur beachwear of fashionable young women, in the same way that female toplessness might well do on a public beach in the UK these days. However on Mediterranean beaches it’s quite normal to find women sunbathing topless. Will topless women still shock UK beaches in 20 years’ time? If not, what will?

And when is the law actually broken, anyway? The Sexual Offences Act 2003 has settled on three points to prove - to be found guilty of indecent exposure a person must have exposed their naked body a) intentionally, b) in order that another person could see, and crucially c) thus causing alarm or distress to that person.

So exposing one’s naked body is not against the law if you don’t do it intentionally, or if you take reasonable precautions to not be seen doing so, or even if you’re seen but the viewer isn’t alarmed or distressed by the experience.

That the Sexual Offences Act 2003 ultimately leaves it up to the ‘victim’ to decide whether an indecent exposure offence has occurred is either a satisfyingly open-minded common sense approach or a legal cop-out that creates a wishy-washy grey area, depending on your point of view.

Nudists might stereotypically tell us that it’s only a body and we’ve all got one, and they’re right. But people who feel strongly that there are certain body parts that should remain private, are also entitled to be protected by the law. The law has to account for a society that allows certain widely-accepted occasional practices such as sunbathing almost naked on a public beach, or totally naked in their own back garden. But ‘the line’ is difficult to draw.

So, if you’re tempted to shed your inhibitions and your clothing on the beach, the question to ask yourself is ‘would a reasonable person be offended? After all getting naked is one thing, getting arrested is quite another.

  • Not-so-green grass

Everyone wants a summer lawn to rival something from Wimbledon. However, what happens if a lawn treatment company turns your lush green turf into brown, parched scrub?

You know the feeling - summer is finally here, the sun is shining, the neighbours barbecue is filling your garden with acrid smoke, and you just want to sit in your garden and chill out. Better still, why not give your friends a ring and have them pop over for that spur-of-the-moment last-minute barbecue party? Fantastic. But then you remember why not - the proverbial fly in your sun screen. Your garden, your pride and joy and your very own version of the Chelsea Flower Show, is now a sheer embarrassment due to the shady character who came around to ‘treat’ your lawn.

The newspapers are full of adverts for excellent lawn treatment companies, but despite what your wife said, you decided to go with the guy who put a note through your door offering huge discounts. You rang the mobile number on the flier and waited while his dented and rusty white van rounded the corner. He demanded cash payment up front, with a wink and a smile, but you still suspected nothing.

He pulled out his backpack lawn sprayer - the latest technology, apparently - and you were highly impressed when he sprayed your entire lawn in a matter of seconds. Before you knew it, he and his nifty backpack had vanished.

Then, on closer inspection, you noticed that he had been slightly careless with his sprayer - splattering your flowers with lawn treatment. Except this ‘lawn treatment’ was burning holes in your patio and your prize dahlias were beginning to wilt and droop, just like your spirits. And the lawn itself… looks like it’s fallen victim to a bonfire. You realise, to your horror, that the ‘treatment’ was more like extra strength weed killer.

So, what can you do?

Like all contractors who carry out work for you, the lawn treatment cowboy is bound by the Supply of Goods and Services Act. The service given must be provided with reasonable skill and care. In essence, you have rights to ensure that they put the bad service right. Either the offending persons must do it, or they must pay someone else to do it.

In most cases, you should allow the trader the opportunity to put things right - here I very much doubt you will ever see him again and if you only have a mobile it may be difficult to get an address, but you should try. Your right to claim damages if the dispute goes to court could be affected if you have not allowed the trader the opportunity to put things right - here I very much doubt you will ever see him again, and if you only have a mobile number it may be difficult to get an address. However, you should try.

If you don’t have luck with finding an address, and he is mysteriously ‘unavailable’ to take your calls, then send him a text and keep it on your phone. Tell the trader what the problems are and what you want the trader to do and when. If you can confirm this in writing with a deadline for him to sort it out, that is ideal. You need to tell him that after his deadline, you will obtain a quote from another trader and have them carry out the work, and seek to recover costs from the original lawn treatment man in court if necessary.

Can you claim extra for loss of enjoyment of your garden? You can try, but the courts in England and Wales are notoriously ungenerous here. They prefer awarding damages for definite figures, so it is better to try and rebuild your patio and replace your prize dahlias, and claim for that.

  • Swallowed by the stripes - what to do if your hired deckchair collapses

Have you ever wondered what your contract with the deckchair attendant entitles you to, if the chair collapses under you?

The holiday has begun. The horrors of long drive to the English coast with the family is over and you’re standing looking at the beach in your best M&S shorts plastered in SPF 30 and breathing in the fresh sea air. You’ve almost convinced yourself that the beaches in England really are second to none and you didn’t need to go to Spain. “They have everything” you say, “sun, sand, ice cream, kiss me quick hats, and sticks of rock” and other local delicacies which you only find on holiday (for which there is a very good reason).

As you wander down to the beach, you try hard to ignore that lump of something you’ve stood in which you’re not quite certain whether its local fauna, oil or something worse , and you head over to where the deckchairs stand in regimented rows blowing in the wind.

The friendly greeting of the very surly young deckchair attendant leads to a negotiation of payment for the day which would go a long way to pay off the UK national debt, and when it’s over you settle down with your 99 ice cream into one of his rather old deckchairs.

And then - like a scene from a TV comedy show - there’s a large crack, the deckchair collapses and you find yourself in a heap on the sand covered in ice cream with your family laughing at you. Your shock is only partly eased by the fact that you are about to become a social media sensation as a result of your teenage son capturing the moment on his phone.

All very funny, and embarrassing, but what if you had been injured? You could easily have had broken bones or perhaps aggravated an existing back problem. Could you make a claim?

It would very much depend on what had happened. If the problem was caused by a faulty deckchair, i.e. the frame was rotten or broken, or the covering damaged, then you would almost certainly be able to claim against the deckchair owner. If though it had simply collapsed because you had tried to adjust it or moved it and not done it properly, then it may prove far more difficult.

Sadly you are unlikely to get enhanced damages for your embarrassment, you’re probably better off sending the video into You’ve Been Framed and claiming the £250.

  • The revenge of barbecued sausage

Barbecues are a staple of British summer, but what happens if your cooking nightmares come true and your painstaking efforts give all of your guests food poisoning?

Barbecues come in all shapes and sizes. From the traditional charcoal numbers or gas-fired ones with countless burners that cost more than the cooker in your kitchen (why?!), it is impossible to think of a warm evening without the smell of charcoal and burning sausages. So, on the three weekends in the summer that you can brush the dust off yours, you want to rush around, invite all of your friends and show off your prowess at incinerating that carefully-prepared meal in record time. You lay on a spread with enough meat to feed a den of hungry lions.

But then, as the night is closing in and the conversation is turning to ‘really should have brought a jumper’, and ‘it’s not the same as aboard, the nights are just sooo much warmer in the Caribbean, darling’, you note that one of your guests has apparently had too much to drink and is violently vomiting all over your prize dahlias.

Annoyance and jibes about people not being able to handle their drink dry up as another guest rushes off to the toilet gripping their stomach and you realise that the guest being ill is actually the nominated driver and not drunk at all.

The evening has turned into a scene from a horror movie with guests one by one turning from a sunburnt prawn pink to deathly white. Slowly it dawns on you…. Could it be your cooking?

A couple of days later, one of the guests telephones to say that they have been diagnosed with salmonella poisoning, and you know that you have been permanently excluded from their Christmas card list.

So, is it really your cooking skills that are to blame? And even worse, could anyone launch a claim against your offensive food? Well, the guides tell you that Salmonella is easily prevented by the ‘Four C’s’ - Cleanliness, Chilling, Cooking and preventing Cross-contamination. You realise that you must discover what caused the problem. If your cooking was to blame (who knew that you couldn’t eat chicken wings medium-rare?), you may need to urgently inspect your household insurance policy. But, if the problem can be traced to the dodgy side street butchers that you bought it from, then there may be a claim against the suppliers, rather than you.

Remember that anyone who suspects that they have salmonella or any other type of food poisoning from eating takeaway or restaurant food should report this to their local Environmental Health Office. The reason for this is to allow an investigation by environmental health officers. They may take action if there is a problem with the restaurant’s food hygiene practices.

If a doctor suspects that you have food poisoning, or if salmonella infection is confirmed, then they are also required by law to report this.

Oh, the British summer is such fun.