Failure to give the name of the landlord, or the provision of an entirely incorrect name for the landlord, will invalidate a notice of invitation to participate in a right to manage claim

The right to manage provisions in the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002 enable leaseholders to establish a right to manage company to assume responsibility for the day-to-day management of the blocks of flats in which they live, without having to prove that their landlord is at fault. Premises fall within the ambit of the scheme if they consist of a self-contained building or part of a building, with or without appurtenant property. The right to manage company must serve a notice containing prescribed information, inviting qualifying tenants to participate, before making a right to manage claim – and the Right to Manage (Prescribed Particulars and Forms) (England) Regulations 2010 state that invitations to participate must include the landlord’s name. The notice of invitation to participate served in Assethold Ltd 13-24 Romside Place RTM CO Ltd [2013] UKUT 603 (LC); [2014] PLSCS 12 named the landlord’s predecessor in title as the freeholder. The landlord argued that the error invalidated the company’s subsequent claim to acquire the right to manage because a valid notice of invitation to participate is a pre-requisite to the service of a valid notice of claim. Parliament enacted section 78(7) of the 2002 Act to ensure that invitations to participate are not invalidated by any inaccuracy in the particulars contained in them. However, the landlord relied on two previous tribunal decisions that differentiated failures to provide the prescribed information from inaccuracies or lack of exactness in the information provided: Assethold Ltd v 14 Stansfield Road RTM Co Ltd [2012] UKUT 262 (LC); [2012] PLSCS 205 and Assethold Ltd v 15 Yonge Park RTM Co Ltd [2011] UKUT 379 (LC) [2011] PLSCS 251. By naming the wrong landlord in the notice of invitation to participate, the right to manage company had failed to provide the information required. A reasonable tenant would not necessarily know who the freeholder was at any one time and would need the correct information to make an informed decision about whether to join the right to manage company. Consequently, the error was not merely an “inaccuracy” and section 78(7) did not apply.  Therefore, the notice of invitation to participate was invalid. This meant that the company’s claim to exercise the right to manage was also invalid, because section 79(2) provides that a claim notice “may not be given unless each person required to be given a notice of invitation to participate has been given such a notice at least 14 days before”.  The saving provision in section 81(1), which prevents claim notices from being invalidated by any inaccuracy in any of the particulars provided in them, was of no assistance either. The provision was enacted to cure inaccuracies in the claim form itself – and did not deal with any invalidity in the notice of invitation to participate that preceded the notice of claim. As a result, the right to manage company was not entitled to acquire the right to manage at that time. Allyson Colby is a property law consultant