PP 2008/11

The Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 enables tenants of long leasehold flats to extend their leases for a further 90 years. However, if a lease has less than five years to run, the landlord can object to the tenant’s request for a further lease on the ground that it intends to demolish or reconstruct the whole or a substantial part of any premises in which the flat is contained. What exactly do the words “any premises” mean? Do they mean “the whole or any part” of a building? Or do they mean the building as a whole, or a self-contained part of it? In Majorstake Ltd v Curtis [2008] UKHL 10; [2008] PLSCS 28, the landlord planned to combine two apartments on separate floors in a large block of flats into a single duplex apartment. The Court of Appeal upheld the landlord’s objection to the tenant’s request for a further lease. It ruled that the request was stymied by the landlord’s proposals for redevelopment. The House of Lords has overruled that decision. It held that the legislation was enacted to give long leaseholders of flats rights as close as possible to those of freeholders. That purpose would be frustrated if landlords could defeat a tenant’s rights by proposing comparatively minor works to buildings. The lords ruled that the word “premises” could not be interpreted as constituting a notional space that a landlord could define in whatever way it chose. In reaching its decision, the Court of Appeal had had to accept that a landlord could define a space as containing a flat and an adjoining boxroom or even part of the hallway outside the flat. That would allow landlords to sidestep the Act. It would also render meaningless the concept of a “substantial part of” any premises; the smaller the space the landlord chose to define, the easier it would be to say that the proposed redevelopment was of a substantial part of the premises. Lord Scott noted that Harry Potter might have received letters addressed to him at “The Cupboard under the Stairs, 4 Privet Drive, Little Winging”. None the less, although a cupboard might have constituted “premises” for the purpose of letters from Hogwarts, when construing the 1993 Act, one must assume the normal use of the English language. The lords agreed that the premises that were to be redeveloped must occupy an objectively recognisable physical space. They expressed slightly differing views about what might, in practice, meet the requirements of the Act, but agreed that the area affected by the landlord’s proposals did not qualify as “any premises in which the flat is contained”. Some will welcome the decision. Others will feel that the lords have strained the rules of statutory interpretation to do justice to the social and economic purposes behind the legislation. The Lords accepted that future decisions will rest on the facts in any given case. Some will welcome the flexibility this offers, while others will bemoan the fact that they have been left to “muggle” through. Allyson Colby is a property law Consultant