Normanton (Earl) v Giles and another

Rent (Agriculture) Act 1976–Action for possession of cottage–Whether gamekeeper an agricultural worker–Glendyne v Rapley followed–Submission of distinction based on commercial aspects of pheasant shooting rejected–County court judge’s order for possession upheld In this appeal Stanley Giles and Diana Mary Giles, his wife, sought to reverse an order made by Judge Lee at Salisbury County Court granting possession to the Earl of Normanton of a cottage occupied by Mr and Mrs Giles, Mr Giles having been Lord Normanton’s gamekeeper. The appellant, Mr Giles, appeared in person and represented his wife; H P D Bennett (instructed by Forward, Allan & Co, of Chandler’s Ford, Hants) represented the respondent. Giving judgment, STEPHENSON LJ said: This is an appeal by Mr Giles against an order made by His Honour Judge Lee in the Salisbury County Court on February 18 in which he ordered possession of a cottage against Mr Giles and his wife–and I should say that his wife is also an appellant and he has represented her in person today–at the suit of the Earl of Normanton. Mr Giles was, for many years, Lord Normanton’s gamekeeper, and he was given a notice to quit–first of all a notice to quit which the same learned judge held to be invalid, and then another notice to quit which the learned judge held valid; and the only way in which Mr and Mrs Giles could have defeated Lord Normanton’s claim to possession was by showing that they were protected tenants. And the only way in which they could become protected was by showing that Mr Giles was an agricultural worker. Now, Judge Lee held that he was not. He considered the definitions in the Rent (Agriculture) Act 1976–”agriculture’ includes . . . livestock keeping and breeding’ . . . ‘For the purposes of the definition. . . ‘livestock’ includes any animal which is kept for the production of food’ among other things, ‘or for the purpose of its use in the carrying on of any agricultural activity’–and for the purposes of this definition, ”animal’ includes bird but does not include fish.’  The learned judge came to the conclusion that what Mr Giles was doing was not within that definition; he pointed out that it was the first time anybody had had to consider the question because it was the first time that anybody had suggested that a gamekeeper was an agricultural worker. In that he was only just right, because apparently about the same time it80 was being suggested by a Mr Rapley, who was gamekeeper to Lord Glendyne in an adjoining county, that he was employed in agriculture–and as I say he was a gamekeeper–but the learned judge went on to find that a gamekeeper was there for the purpose of keeping game for shooting, and employment for the purposes of shooting is sport. It is not part of food production or the keeping of livestock, and the 1976 Act, he therefore held, did not apply to Mr Giles’ employment. I do not know what I would have said if I had to consider the various grounds of appeal which were settled (it should, I think, be noticed) by the counsel who was counsel for Mr Rapley in the Glendyne case; that is to say, raising questions of law on the interpretation of the Act or the definition. But since the learned judge gave his judgment, there has been published the judgment given on February 23 by a division of this court consisting of Lord Scarman and Megaw and Roskill LJJ in which this very point has been decided, and decided adversely to the gamekeeper. I have studied that case, now reported in [1978] 1 WLR 601 and I have listened with care to the submissions that Mr Giles has made with great courtesy. He has taken a lot of trouble and he has obviously prepared his appeal with great care in seeking to distinguish that case from this. He argues that Lord Glendyne shot for pleasure only and farmed his whole estate. Here Lord Normanton is one of a syndicate; he charges eight other guns £1,200 a year each for the pleasure of shooting; he made £3,000 profit last year on his shoot and it is a commercial venture because Mr Giles, as a gamekeeper, was rearing something like seven thousand pheasants, and also Lord Normanton has four tenant farmers and does not actually farm the land himself. He says, therefore, that this is a commercial venture in Lord Normanton’s case–it was not in Lord Glendyne’s–and it is those facts and as far as I can make out no others, which distinguish his case from that. It is to be noted that, according to the judgment in that case, Lord Glendyne sold 80 per cent of the birds he and his guests shot, and even if he was not charging the guns for payment, he was making money on the sale of his pheasants, so in a sense he was producing food. But the court in that case came to the clear conclusion, as stated in the headnote, ‘that the definition of ‘agriculture’ in section 1, subsection (1)(a), of the Act of 1976 was not intended to include every rural activity but was directed towards including all operations involving farming land for commercial purposes, the relevant purpose in the present case being the production of food; that the judge’s finding that the pheasants were kept for sport was conclusive; that the defendant’s employment was to promote not agriculture but a field sport and accordingly he was not protected by the Act.’ I can see Mr Giles being somewhat bewildered by other decisions of the court–not all by this court–about golf green keepers, huntsmen and so on, but we are bound by the very recent decision of this court in the case of Lord Glendyne v Rapley. I am unable to distinguish that case in favour of Mr Giles, and it follows that this appeal must be dismissed. Agreeing LAWTON LJ said: I only add this: Mr Giles’ point today was that Lord Normanton in one year made a profit of over £3,000. This seems to have been brought to the attention of the learned trial judge, because he said this in the note of the judgment which we have: ‘Of course shooting is an expensive occupation. In order to keep the shoot going the birds are sold for money to various persons to pass on to the dinner tables. Money comes back. None is used as profit and it all goes back into the shoot. Mr Giles and his counsel accepted that the money received went back into the shoot and was not for profit.’ I agree that the appeal should be dismissed. The appeal was dismissed with costs.