E O N Motors Ltd v Secretary of State for the Environment and another

Compulsory acquisition — Acquisition of Land (Authorisation Procedure) Act 1946, Schedule 1 — Notice of compulsory purchase order — Complaint by tenants of part of subject land that they should have been served with the notice — Exception for ‘tenants for a month or any period less than a month’ — Rent paid by reference to a week, but tenants had been in occupation paying rent for some years — Argument by tenants that they were to be regarded as tenants for more than a month as their tenancy had lasted for months — Held, rejecting this submission, that they were weekly tenants and that the length of their occupation did not covert their tenancy into a great interest — Hence tenants not entitled to a notice of the making of the order — Application dismissed This was an application by E O N Motors Ltd to quash a compulsory purchase order made by Newbury District Council and confirmed by the Secretary of State for the Environment in respect of land at Speenhamland Farm, Newbury, of 0.56 hectare in extent. The applicant complained that he had not received notice of the compulsory purchase order, contrary to Schedule 1 to the Acquisition of Land (Authorisation Procedure) Act 1946. G Nurse (instructed by Charles Lucas & Marshall, of Newbury) appeared on behalf of the applicant; J Sullivan (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) represented the first respondent, the Secretary of State; the second respondents, Newbury District Council, were not represented and took no part in the proceedings. Giving judgment, SIR DOUGLAS FRANK QC said: On December 7 1978 the second respondents, exercising their power under the Housing Act 1957, made a compulsory purchase order on 0.56 hectare of land known as Speenhamland Farm, Newbury. The order was submitted to the Secretary of State, who confirmed it on November 19 1979, there having been no objections. Before making the order, the council sent the freeholder a requisition for information, requiring him to state the nature of his interest in the land and that of any other occupier. In response to that, the owner sent by way of his solicitors the completed form, in which the only occupier stated was the lessee under a seven-year term. In fact, in about May 1975 the applicants in this court were granted a tenancy of part of the land. The agreement as stated by one of the directors was20 ‘that the company would pay every quarter a rent calculated on the basis of £20 per week, and it was further agreed that the company would pay half the cost of repairs to the premises’. Copies of invoices produced show that rent was paid at intervals of not less than four months, but calculated at the rate of £20 per week. The Acquisition of Land (Authorisation Procedure) Act 1946 applied to this acquisition and in particular Schedule 1 paragraph 3(1)(b), which so far as relevant provides as follows: 3. (1)  Before submitting the order to the confirming authority the acquiring authority shall: (a)  . . . . (b)  except in so far as the confirming authority directs that this provision shall not have effect in any particular case, serve on every owner, lessee and occupier (except tenants for a month or any period less than a month) of any land comprised in the order a notice in the prescribed form stating the effect of the order and that it is about to be submitted for confirmation, and specifying the time (not being less than twenty-one days from the service of the notice) within which and the manner in which objections thereto can be made; It is the applicants’ case that the compulsory purchase order should be quashed on the ground that they were entitled to have been served with a notice of it and that they were not (as is conceded) so served. The argument advanced for the applicants, put shortly, is that they did not fall within the exception in paragraph 3(1)(b) of Schedule 1 because their tenancy lasted for more than a month, so that they were a tenant for more than a month. In other words, a tenancy for a month is not the same as a monthly tenancy and once occupation goes beyond a month the tenancy is not for a month. In my judgment, the tenancy granted here was not for a fixed term and therefore the term is determined by reference to the period for which the rent was payable and therefore it is a weekly tenancy. That much is not in contention. However, in my judgment a tenancy which commences as a weekly tenancy is a tenancy for one week and continues to be a tenancy for one week, however long it may last. The fact that a tenant stays for longer than a week does not convert the tenancy into one of a longer period. That view seems to be reinforced by the purpose of the paragraph, which cannot be for the benefit of those who have been tenants for a long time, but for the protection of those who might be entitled to remain for a long period. The conclusion I have reached seems to be in line with the decision of the Lands Tribunal in Selborne (Gowns) Ltd v Ilford Corporation (1962) 13 P&CR 350 and of the Court of Appeal in Benjamin v Newham London Borough (1968) 19 P&CR 365. Accordingly, I hold that the applicants were not entitled to the service of a notice of the making of the order and therefore that this application fails. I should add for completeness that Mr Sullivan, for the Secretary of State, argued that because the applicants became aware of the making of the compulsory purchase order before it was confirmed and made no inquiries as to their right to object, that they did not suffer substantial prejudice or that, in any event, the court should not exercise its discretion in favour of the applicants. However, had the applicants made inquiries as to their right of objection they would have discovered that they would have been out of time to object. Be that as it may, I do not think that it was incumbent upon the applicants to make the inquiries which Mr Sullivan said they should have made. Accordingly, had I been satisfied that the notice should have been served, I would have quashed the order. The application was dismissed with costs, payable to the first respondent.