Prasad and another v Wolverhampton Borough Council

Land Compensation Act 1973, sections 37 and 38 — Adjourned hearing of appeal to the Court of Appeal from a decision of the Lands Tribunal — Important question as to the entitlement of a person displaced from land by the process of compulsory acquisition to receive a disturbance payment under section 37 in respect of removal expenses and loss of business incurred or suffered before notice to treat had been served — Appellants in the present case had withdrawn from the premises before such service in anticipation of the acquisition being completed — Authorities reviewed by court including decisions of the Lands Tribunal for Scotland and of the Court of Session in Aberdeen City District Council v Sim — Although the Scottish decisions were based on the rules relating to compensation for disturbance before the Land Compensation Act 1973 and the corresponding Scottish Act, the court found them of strong persuasive authority for the construction of section 37 of the 1973 Act — Held that a person could be displaced from land ‘in consequence of the acquisition of the land by an authority possessing compulsory purchase powers’ within the meaning of section 37, notwithstanding that he had left the property before the service of a notice to treat — ‘In consequence of’ is not restricted to a purely temporal meaning but has also a causal connotation — Expenses and loss claimed must have been reasonably incurred in anticipation of the dispossession — Case remitted to Lands Tribunal to decide in the light of this ruling on the law and on the relevant evidence whether the appellants were entitled to a disturbance payment This was an adjourned hearing, the Court of Appeal having given a decision on November 10 1982 rejecting a number of grounds of appeal submitted by the appellants, Dr Sachindra Prasad and his wife, Mrs Bindu Prasad, against a decision of the Lands Tribunal (Mr W H Rees FRICS) given on May 18 1981 (REF/141/1980). The tribunal had awarded the appellants the sum of £150, being the site value of their freehold house at 38 Salisbury Street, Wolverhampton, but had rejected other claims to compensation, the total amounting to over £90,000 including a claim under the head of disturbance for removal expenses and business loss. The tribunal rejected the disturbance claim because these items had been incurred before the service of the notice to treat. The appellants in a notice of appeal made a number of allegations in regard to the manner in which the Lands Tribunal had dealt with the case. The Court of Appeal in their decision of November 10 rejected these allegations, but decided that the tribunal’s ruling on the disturbance claim required further consideration, particularly in view of the recent decision of the Scottish Court of Session in Aberdeen City District Council v Sim. They accordingly adjourned the hearing and asked for the assistance of an amicus curiae in order to hear full legal argument, as Dr Prasad was appearing in person. A report of the judgments delivered at the adjourned hearing is given below. Dr Prasad appeared in person on behalf of both appellants; Alan Fletcher (instructed by Sharpe, Pritchard & Co) represented the respondent council; Simon Brown (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) appeared as amicus curiae. Giving judgment, STEPHENSON LJ said: I have stated the nature of this appeal and the facts of the case in the judgment which I gave, with the agreement of my Lords, on November 10 1982. I incorporate what I then said at pp 1 to 5A of the transcript, without repeating it, in the judgment which I now give. We then rejected all the appellants’ grounds of appeal save one, and we adjourned the hearing of the appeal on the one ground only, as Dr Prasad was appearing in person for his wife and himself without legal assistance or qualifications and it appeared to us and to Mr Fletcher on behalf of the respondent council to raise a point of law which had been the subject of conflicting decisions in England and Scotland and which called for the help of an amicus curiae. This remaining head of claim is made under section 63 of the Housing Act 1957, now replaced by sections 37 and 38 of the Land Compensation Act 1973, the statute which now deals with what it calls ‘disturbance payments’ as follows: 37 — (1)  Where a person is displaced from any land in consequence of — (a)  the acquisition of the land by an authority possessing compulsory purchase powers; (b)  the making, passing or acceptance of a housing order, resolution or undertaking in respect of a house or building on the land; (c)  where the land has been previously acquired by an authority possessing compulsory purchase powers or appropriated by a local authority and is for the time being held by the authority for the purposes for which it was acquired or appropriated, the carrying out of redevelopment on the land, he shall, subject to the provisions of this section, be entitled to receive a payment (hereafter referred to as a ‘disturbance payment’) from the acquiring authority, the authority who made the order, passed the resolution or accepted the undertaking or the authority carrying out the redevelopment, as the case may be. (2)  A person shall not be entitled to a disturbance payment — (a)  in any case, unless he is in lawful possession of the land from which he is displaced; (b)  in a case within subsection (1)(a) above, unless either — (i)  he has no interest in the land for the acquisition or extinguishment of which he is (or if the acquisition or extinguishment were compulsory would be) entitled to compensation under any other enactment; or (ii)  he has such an interest as aforesaid but the compensation is subject to a site value provision and he is not (or if the acquisition were compulsory would not be) entitled in respect of that acquisition to an owner-occupier’s supplement; (c)  in a case within subsection (1)(b) above, if he is entitled to an owner-occupier’s supplement by reference to the order, resolution or undertaking. In this subsection ‘site value provision’ means section 29(2) or 59(2) of the Housing Act 1957, section 20 of the Housing (Scotland) Act 1966 or section 10 of the Housing (Scotland) Act 1969 and ‘owner-occupier’s supplement’ means a payment under Part II of Schedule 2 to the said Act of 1957, Schedule 5 to the Housing Act 1969 or sections 18 to 20 of the Housing (Scotland) Act 1969. (3)  For the purposes of subsection (1) above a person shall not be treated as displaced in consequence of any such acquisition or redevelopment as is mentioned in paragraph (a) or (c) of that subsection unless he was in lawful possession of the land — (a)  in the case of land acquired under a compulsory purchase order, at the time when notice was first published of the making of the compulsory11 purchase order prior to its submission for confirmation or, where the order did not require confirmation, of the preparation of the order in draft; (b)  in the case of land acquired under an Act specifying the land as subject to compulsory acquisition, at the time when the provisions of the Bill for that Act specifying the land were first published; (c)  in the case of land acquired by agreement, at the time when the agreement was made; and a person shall not be treated as displaced in consequence of any such order, resolution or undertaking as is mentioned in paragraph (b) of that subsection unless he was in lawful possession as aforesaid at the time when the order was made, the resolution was passed or the undertaking was accepted. . . . (6)  A disturbance payment shall carry interest, at the rate for the time being prescribed under section 32 of the Land Compensation Act 1961 or, in Scotland, section 40 of the Land Compensation (Scotland) Act 1963, from the date of displacement until payment. . . . (10)  This section applies if the date of displacement is on or after October 17 1972. 38 — (1)  The amount of a disturbance payment shall be equal to — (a)  the reasonable expenses of the person entitled to the payment in removing from the land from which he is displaced; and (b)  if he was carrying on a trade or business on that land, the loss he will sustain by reason of the disturbance of that trade or business consequent upon his having to quit the land. (2)  In estimating the loss of any person for the purposes of subsection (1)(b) above, regard shall be had to the period for which the land occupied by him may reasonably have been expected to be available for the purposes of his trade or business and to the availability of other land suitable for that purpose. This subsection has effect subject to section 46(7) below. . . . (4)  Any dispute as to the amount of a disturbance payment shall be referred to and determined by the Lands Tribunal or, in Scotland, the Lands Tribunal for Scotland. The items of this claim are not precisely defined either in Dr Prasad’s notice of appeal, paragraph 3, p 1 or in his so-called pleadings, paragraph 9, p 9. But it is the sort of loss specified in section 38(1) — expenses of moving and loss of patients and consequent financial loss — for which Dr Prasad seeks compensation. In his claim to the Lands Tribunal he put the amount of that loss at no less than £39,000. That was item 5 of his claim; the Lands Tribunal dealt with that at p 5 of the decision in this way: With regard to item 5, Mr Powis’ evidence that Dr Prasad vacated the subject premises at the end of 1979 and if one looks back at page 2 of the decision it looks as if that means October 1979 before he had received notice to treat, was not contested. Having regard to that, the acquiring authority’s solicitor [Mr Webb] submitted that the claimant was not entitled to compensation for disturbance and in that connection he referred me to Walters and Others v South Glamorgan County Council (1976) 238 ESTATES GAZETTE 733 and M Bloom (Kosher) & Son Ltd v Tower Hamlets London Borough (1978) the case was in fact decided in 1977 247 ESTATES GAZETTE 1091. The claimant said that he had had to move because large numbers of houses close to his surgery had been demolished and he lost his patients in consequence. I accept the submission made by the acquiring authority’s solicitor and determine that no compensation is payable in respect of item 5 of the claim; in any event the figure of £39,000 is quite unsupported. Mr Fletcher, I think, ultimately conceded that that was simply a conclusion by the member that the claim was bad in law, not that it was unsupported by any facts. He was following the authorities cited to him and indicating that if he had felt able to depart from them he could not think that the appellants’ loss and expenses before the notice to treat could come to anything like £39,000. The council acted under Part III of the Housing Act 1957. The relevant provisions of that Part are: 42 — (1) Where a local authority . . . are satisfied as respects any area in their district — (a) that the houses in that area are unfit for human habitation . . . the authority shall cause that area to be defined on a map . . . and shall pass a resolution declaring the area so defined to be a clearance area, that is to say, an area to be cleared of all buildings in accordance with the subsequent provisions of this Part of this Act . . . 43 — (1) So soon as may be after a local authority have declared any area to be a clearance area, they shall, subject to and in accordance with the provisions of this Part of this Act, proceed to secure the clearance of the area in one or other of the following ways, or partly in one of those ways and partly in the other of them, that is to say — (a)  by making one or more orders (in this Act referred to as ‘clearance orders’) for the demolition of the buildings in the area; or (b)  by purchasing the land comprised in the area and themselves undertaking, or otherwise securing, the demolition of the buildings on that land. 47 — (1) Subject to the provisions of the next following section, a local authority who have under this Part of this Act purchased any land comprised in, or surrounded by, or adjoining, a clearance area shall, so soon as may be, cause every building thereon to be vacated and shall deal with that land in one or other of the following ways, or partly in one of these ways and partly in the other of them, that is to say — (a)  they shall demolish every building thereon before the expiration of six weeks from the date on which it is vacated, or before the expiration of such longer period as in the circumstances they deem reasonable . . . 59 — (1) Where land is purchased compulsorily by a local authority under this Part of this Act, the compensation payable in respect thereof shall be assessed in accordance with the Acquisition of Land (Assessment of Compensation) Act 1919, subject to the following provisions of this section. (2)  The compensation to be paid for the land, including any buildings thereon, purchased as being land comprised in a clearance area shall be the value at the time the valuation is made of the land as a site cleared of buildings and available for development in accordance with the requirements of the building byelaws for the time being in force in the district: . . . The right to compensation seems limited until inspection of the Act of 1919 reveals that it preserves what has been called the common law right to compensation for disturbance. Section 2 of that Act provides rules for compensation including: (2)  The value of the land shall, subject as hereinafter provided, be taken to be the amount which the land if sold in the open market by a willing seller might be expected to realise: Provided always that the arbitrator shall be entitled to consider all returns and assessments of capital value for taxation made or acquiesced in by the claimant. . . . (6)  The provisions of Rule (2) shall not affect the assessment of compensation for disturbance or any other matter not directly based on the value of land. The effect of that last provision was stated by Sir Wilfred Greene MR in Horn v Sunderland Corporation [1941] 2 KB 26 at p 34, as follows: Now r(6) does not confer a right to claim compensation for disturbance. It merely leaves unaffected the right which the owner would before the Act of 1919 have had in a proper case to claim that the compensation to be paid for the land should be increased on the ground that he had been disturbed. That section is now re-enacted in section 5 of the Land Compensation Act 1961 with the same numbered rules. The appellants were displaced, apparently in October 1979, from their house, 38 Salisbury Street, Wolverhampton, which was acquired by an authority possessing compulsory purchase powers. But were they displaced ‘in consequence of its acquisition?’  The answer depends on the true construction of those words in their context. For unless they were displaced in consequence of the council’s acquisition of their land they were not entitled to disturbance payments under section 37 as defined in section 38. Mr Fletcher contended, and contends, that they were not so displaced because they left house and land before the notice to treat on November 2 1979: no acquisition till notice to treat; no displacement in consequence of acquisition till after notice to treat, because ‘in consequence of’ means ‘following in point of time’, ‘after as well as because of’. So they have no right to a disturbance payment and the member was right to confine their compensation to the site value of the land under section 59(2) of the Act of 1957. That is the normal rule of the Lands Tribunal in England laid down in 1962 and followed in other cases decided before and after the Act of 1973, including this case: Webb v Stockport Corporation (1962) 13 P & CR 339; Widden v Kensington & Chelsea London Borough Council (1970) 10 RVR 160; Bostock, Chater & Sons Ltd v Chelmsford Corporation (1973) 26 P & CR 321; Walters Brett & Park v South Glamorgan County Council (1976) 32 P & CR 111; Bloom (Kosher) & Son Ltd v Tower Hamlets London Borough (1978) 35 P & CR 423. In the last of these cases Mr V G Wellings QC put the matter clearly and succinctly in different ways at pp 430 and 434 of the report: I cannot accept that a loss is consequent upon an acquisition if it is incurred before there is an acquisition. . . . loss which precedes an acquisition cannot, in my view, be regarded as the consequence of it. 12 If loss precedes acquisition, a fortiori displacement which causes loss precedes acquisition and cannot be consequent upon it or a consequence of it. But Mr Fletcher drew to our attention in discharge of his duty as counsel two decisions of the Lands Tribunal for Scotland, one of which had been affirmed by the Court of Session, which allowed losses or expenses incurred before a notice to treat; and it was to resolve the apparent conflict between the two countries that we invited the assistance of an amicus curiae. The basis for allowing such losses was that they are caused by the dispossession, caused by the compulsory acquisition and in that sense, though not in time, both dispossession and the losses caused by it are consequences of the acquisition. Mr Fletcher submits that the Scottish decisions are wrong and have no application to the construction of section 37 of the English statute, and that the appellants are not entitled to any disturbance payment by reason of the fact that before service of the notice to treat they have removed themselves from the premises compulsorily acquired by the council. Mr Simon Brown, in discharge of his duty to help the court as amicus, has felt bound to resist Mr Fletcher’s support of the English decisions, including that under appeal, and to argue for a generous construction of sections 37 and 38 in support of the appellants’ case on this point. He submits that the requirement that a claimant must be displaced from land in consequence of the compulsory acquisition is to be treated as a causal but not necessarily a temporal qualification; the requirement is satisfied if the displacement is caused by, occurs by reason of, a compulsory acquisition; it does not have to follow the acquisition temporarily, in temporal sequence, in point of time. If Mr Brown’s argument on the meaning of ‘consequent upon’ be right, there is no need to consider the meaning of ‘the acquisition’ and whether it means, as Mr Fletcher argues, the completion of the acquisition by notice to treat. It is admittedly not till notice to treat is given that a relationship analogous to that of vendor and purchaser is established: Tiverton & N Devon Rly Co v Loosemore (1884) 9 App Cas 480. Admittedly also, many years may elapse between an authority’s resolution to acquire, or the threat of it, and confirmation of a compulsory purchase order, and subsequent notice to treat. And it cannot be disputed that it is often wise, and not always risky, for a person threatened with the compulsory acquisition of his property to find alternative accommodation which may put him to expense and which may cause disturbance and loss of trade or business. Such prudent anticipation may mitigate the loss resulting from losing the property, whereas waiting to move till the last moment may increase the dispossessed person’s loss. At the time when the Act of 1973 was passed, compensation for disturbance was payable to landowners dispossessed by compulsory acquisition of their land. Such landowners had to find other property in which to live or to carry on their business, and that might be expensive and cause them compensatable loss. Lord Reid said in West Midland Baptist (Trust) Association (Inc) v Birmingham Corporation [1970] AC 874 at p 893, of the compensation payable under the Lands Clauses Consolidation Act 1845 to such a landowner with a business or trade: If he wishes to continue his activities he will not only have to obtain other premises but he will have to pay costs of removal and if he is carrying on a business the move may cause loss of profits and other loss. He will not be fully compensated unless all this is taken into account. And again at p 896 H, that an owner’s claim might include costs of removal, loss of profits or other consequential loss and there appears to be no suggestion in the authorities that these elements in the value of land to the owner must be valued as at the date of the notice to treat. The actual costs or losses following an actual dispossession have been taken, and that appears to be accepted practice today with regard to claims under rule (6) (of the Act of 1919). That decision removed the date for assessing compensation from the date of the service of the notice to treat to the date on which the work of equivalent reinstatement pursuant to section 2, rule (5) of the Act of 1919 might normally have been commenced. In deciding that case the House of Lords was not concerned with loss incurred in anticipation of compulsory acquisition, but Lord Reid refers to full compensation for costs and losses ‘following an actual dispossession’ (those were his words) and leaves open the question we have to consider and indeed the question when that dispossession ‘actually’ takes place. The same is true of the Court of Appeal in decisions including Harvey v Crawley Development Corporation [1957] 1 QB 485 and Bailey v Derby Corporation [1965] 1 WLR 213. In the former case Mrs Harvey received compensation from the Lands Tribunal and this court for removal expenses, solicitor’s and surveyor’s costs and travelling expenses all incurred after notice to treat. Denning LJ said at p 492: It seems to me that, as these costs of £241 10s 1d were reasonably incurred by Mrs Harvey in getting another house, they can fairly be regarded as a direct consequence of the compulsory acquisition. Prima facie, therefore, they fall within the heading of compensation for disturbance. Romer LJ said at pp 494 — 5: It seems to me that the authorities to which our attention was drawn do establish that any loss sustained by a dispossessed owner (at all events one who occupies his house) which flows from a compulsory acquisition may properly be regarded as the subject of compensation for disturbance, provided, first, that it is not too remote and, secondly, that it is the natural and reasonable consequence of the dispossession of the owner . . . The natural thing for a dispossessed owner-occupier to do is to buy another home of a comparable kind, and that in fact is what Mrs Harvey did . . . I would only add that the tribunal’s decision in this case seems to me not only to be right in law but to accord with common sense. I cannot help feeling that the contrary view would lead to a great deal of discontent on compulsory acquisitions. It is bad enough in itself for a person to be compulsorily dispossessed of his home, but it is worse if he has himself to bear expenses of the kind which are in issue in the present case in finding another house in which to live. Sellers LJ said at p 496: The evidence in this case would seem to show that the tribunal were entirely justified in saying that this particular expenditure in relation to the acquirement of new premises — it may be that the abortive expenditure was a misfortune, but no distinction is made between the two — is expenditure which was directly arising from the circumstance that this lady had to find another house in which to live by reason of being compulsorily dispossessed of her home. In Bailey’s case Denning MR said: You must first ascertain the value of the land. That must be taken as at the date of the notice to treat. Next, you must ascertain the compensation for disturbance, as it is called. That must be ascertained by looking at what has in fact happened since the notice to treat. He can get compensation for his loss due to the acquisition; provided in the words of Romer LJ in Harvey v Crawley Development Corporation, ‘first, that it’ is not too remote, secondly that it is the natural and reasonable ‘consequence of the dispossession of the owner’; and Russell LJ spoke (at p 220 H) of the compensation to which Mr Bailey was entitled as ‘compensation for his loss by reason of the acquisition of the land’. In the latter case Lord Denning’s statement was made before the West Midland Baptist Association case had shifted the date for valuation (though not the date for ascertaining the nature of the owner’s interest: Rugby Joint Water Board v Shaw-Fox [1973] AC 202) from the date of the notice to treat. In the former, the language of Romer and Sellers LJJ is general enough not to exclude costs and loss reasonably incurred in anticipation of a notice to treat leading to final or legal dispossession. So also is the judgment of Lord Alness, Lord Justice Clerk, in the Court of Session in Venables v Department of Agriculture for Scotland 1932 SC 573, a decision approved in Harvey’s case, where Lord Alness quoted with approval the dictum of Lord Kinnear (cited later) in Lanarkshire & Dumbartonshire Railway Co v Main 1895 22 R 912 at p 919, and went on to say: The sound principle would seem to be that the person dispossessed should get compensation for all loss occasioned to him by reason of the dispossession. The Act of 1845 recognises it; the textbooks recognise it; judicial authority recognises it and the Act of 1919 continues to the evicted owner all claims formerly open to him. The principle stated by Romer LJ in Harvey’s case and by Lord Alness in Venables’ case was applied by the Lands Tribunal for Scotland (Lord Elliott and William Hall Esq FRICS) to fees of a quantity surveyor, an architect, a valuer and a solicitor amounting to £3,663.78 reasonably incurred, some of them before the date of the deemed notice to treat, in Smith v Strathclyde Regional Council (1981) 42 P & CR 397; 257 EG 391, 501. In Aberdeen City District Council v Sim on February 18 1981, the Lands Tribunal for Scotland13 (Mr Hall sitting alone) followed that decision in allowing as compensation for disturbance solicitors’ fees incurred in the owners’ purchase of an alternative house when it was indicated that the compulsory purchase of their own house was likely in the near future, though in fact they had been incurred nearly five years before the deemed notice to treat, and even before any resolution of the acquiring authority; and that decision was upheld by the Court of Session (Lords Wheatley, Robertson and Dunpark) on July 9 1982: (1981) 258 ESTATES GAZETTE 451, affirmed (1982) 264 ESTATES GAZETTE 621. It was there conceded that the appellants’ expenses, if incurred after notice to treat, would have been reasonable and that if it was legitimate to look at the period before notice to treat it was natural and reasonable to buy the other house and the expenses of buying it were not too remote. In these cases no mention is made of the Land Compensation (Scotland) Act 1973, in which sections 35 and 36 were enacted in terms identical with sections 37 and 38 of the English Act, probably because the houses acquired were not unfit. But there the Lands Tribunal, and now the Court of Session, have refused to follow Bloom (Kosher) & Sons Ltd v London Borough of Tower Hamlets, the last of the line of decisions of the Lands Tribunal in England to which I have already referred. At pp 623-4 of (1982) 264 ESTATES GAZETTE 621 the Court of Session in Aberdeen v Sim said this: When the issue was debated in this court the argument advanced by counsel, although presented from different angles, came to this. The legal position between the parties did not come into existence until the notice to treat — or the deemed notice to treat — was served. Accordingly the date of the notice to treat was the earliest date from which expenses incurred in consequence of the disturbance occasioned by the acquisition of the property could legally be claimed, as was decided in Bloom (supra). In the instance case, the expenses claimed were incurred some five years prior to the notice to treat, and years prior to the compulsory purchase order itself and even prior to the resolution of the appellants’ predecessors to promote a compulsory purchase order. It was only on the promulgation of the compulsory purchase order that the act of acquisition had begun. That submission having been advanced and stoutly supported, counsel for the appellants conceded that if the tests adumbrated in Harvey (supra) were applied, and it was legitimate to look at the period before the notice to treat was served, the circumstances here were sufficient to warrant the decision at which the tribunal arrived . . . We could have contented ourselves with a simple approval of the decision of the tribunal in Smith’s case and the reasons given therefor, and holding that this was sufficient to warrant the tribunal’s decision. However, in recognition of the careful argument put forward by counsel for the appellants we shall express our own reasons, albeit somewhat briefly. There appears to be no provision for disturbance in the Land Compensation (Scotland) Act 1963 apart from what appears in section 12(6) thereof, namely, ‘The provisions of rule (2) shall not affect the assessment of compensation for disturbance or any other matter not directly based on the value of land’. Nor is there any definition of ‘disturbance’ in that Act. In Venables (supra) Lord Justice Clerk Alness quoted with approval the dictum of Lord Kinnear in Lanarkshire and Dumbartonshire Railway Co v Main 1895 22 R 912 at p 919: ‘It is a well-settled rule in the construction of the Lands Clauses Act (1845) that when lands have been taken in the exercise of compulsory purchase, the owner or occupier, as the case may be, is entitled not only to the market value of his interest but to full compensation for all the loss which he may sustain by being deprived of his land’. The italics are ours. Lord Alness went on to say: ‘If that be sound — and the language is quite general, and the authority of its author unimpeachable — cadit quaestio.’ He summed up the position thus: ‘The sound principle would seem to be that the person dispossessed should get compensation for all loss occasioned to him by reason of his dispossession’. Again the italics are ours, and it is to be observed that the words used are ‘occasioned to him by reason of his dispossession’ and not ‘in consequence of his dispossession’. He went on to indicate that in these circumstances the onus would be on the person maintaining a restriction to that unqualified statement to establish it. Venables is a decision which is binding on this court, and with respect we agree with it. It is a decision which has been accepted, cited with approval and followed in England, as in Harvey (supra). We accordingly turn to consider whether the appellants have successfully circumvented the generality of Venables. We start by recalling the concession that if the tempus inspiciendi in relation to the expense incurred extends prior to the date of the notice to treat, the circumstances here present satisfy the two tests laid down by Romer LJ in Harvey as a matter of fact. The argument for the defenders was based on the use of the word ‘consequence’ by Romer LJ and Denning LJ (as he was then) in Harvey. In laying down the second of his conditions, Romer LJ said that the loss had to be the natural and reasonable consequence of the dispossession of the owner. Denning LJ said: ‘Legal costs reasonably incurred in acquiring another house can fairly be regarded as a direct consequence of the compulsory acquisition.’  It was accordingly argued that ‘consequence’ could only mean ‘following’ in the temporal sense, and that placed the terminus a quo of the qualification for compensation as the date of the notice to treat at the earliest. It was only then that dispossession became a reality and not just possibly a threat. We have several observations to make on this. The word ‘consequence’ was used in Harvey in the circumstances of that case. It would appear that the expenditure in connection with the acquisition of alternative accommodation had been incurred after the development corporation had decided to acquire the plaintiff’s house compulsorily and the plaintiff was faced with the request for acquisition. In that situation the word ‘consequence’ could be used both in the temporal and in the causal sense. It does not follow that the judges were confining its use to the temporal sense. Such a restriction does not seem to us to match with the broader concept stated by Lord Kinnear and Lord Justice Clerk Alness. The phrase used by the latter was ‘all loss occasioned by reason of his dispossession’. Circumstances might prevail when the threat of dispossession was such that prudence would demand that steps be taken to obtain alternative accommodation before the notice to treat was served, since the time available between the service of that notice and the physical dispossession was so short that reasonable alternative accommodation could not be acquired in that period of time. In fact it was said that the period could be restricted to 28 days. The Lord Justice Clerk in Venables regarded the claim for disturbance as one of equity. In the absence of any statutory definition or restriction, we regard that as a proper test. It seems to us to be inequitable if a claim which satisfies the tests of Romer LJ should be denied the right to compensation because the expenditure was incurred prior to the service of the notice to treat, when similar expenditure incurred subsequent to the service of the notice would be admitted. Provided the tests are satisfied the former situation seems to us to be ‘a loss occasioned by reason of his dispossession’. We accordingly take the view that the decision in Smith was right and that the tribunal took the right course in following it in the circumstances of the case. Consequently we do not consider that Bloom should be followed. That being so, we reject the submission of the appellants that the date of the notice to treat or indeed any of their alternatives is the necessary datum line. As Sellers LJ said, it is a question of fact in each case. Any suggestion that such an extension of the time-limit would expose the appellants to extensive and unjustified liability is countered by the restriction imposed by the tests adumbrated by Romer LJ. The Scottish cases appear to be cases of compensation for disturbance under the law as it existed in England and Scotland from 1845 until 1973, the Land Compensation (Scotland) Act of 1963 having the same rules for assessing compensation, including rule (6) which preserves the existing right to compensation for disturbance, as the Act of 1919, which applied to both countries, and the English Land Compensation Act of 1961. These cases are not therefore authorities on the interpretation of the provisions for statutory disturbance payments in the Acts of 1973. But they do interpret differently and purport to follow with differing results from the Lands Tribunal in England, the language of judges in both countries which is sometimes close to the language of those provisions, and I find their reasoning as to the compensation payable for disturbance apart from those statutes compelling. I make no apology for citing also at some length from the earlier decision of the Scottish Lands Tribunal in Smith v Strathclyde Regional Council, because it exactly expresses better than I can my opinion of the authorities and the principle to be drawn from them and applied to costs and loss incurred in obtaining alternative accommodation to that which is threatened with compulsory acquisition. At pp 405-6 of the report in (1981) 42 P & CR 397* the tribunal said of the date of the deemed notice of treat: The question now arises whether this date (that is the date of the deemed notice to treat) constitutes a dividing line on one side of which ‘disturbance or other matters’ mentioned in rule (6) may be claimed; and on the other side of which they may not, even if the items of expenditure were ‘naturally and reasonably incurred’ or ‘the natural thing for a dispossessed owner-occupier to do’ — to quote other passages from the same page of Romer LJ’s judgment in Harvey v Crawley. Both Romer LJ and Denning LJ in Harvey relied on the Scottish case of Venables which was one of the first cases in which the nature of a disturbance claim was reconsidered following the passing of the Acquisition of Land (Assessment of Compensation) Act 1919 in which the so-called rule (6) first appears. In Venables the Court of Session emphasised that claims for disturbance do not arise totidem verbis from section 2(6) itself but are really based on the original provisions of the Lands Clauses Acts. Lord Justice Clerk Alness referred in particular to sections 17, 19, 71 and 114 of the Lands Clauses14 Consolidation (Scotland) Act 1845. These sections, which have their English counterparts, will be seen to refer variously to compensation for damage or for any loss or injury that may be sustained. Hence rule (6) gives no new right but merely preserves the existing right to be compensated not only for the taking of the land but also for consequential loss caused by the compulsory acquisition. Lord Justice Clerk Alness said: ‘The sound principle would seem to be that a person dispossessed should get compensation for all loss occasioned to him by reason of his dispossession.’  He also quoted with approval a dictum of Lord Kinnear in Lanarkshire & Dumbartonshire Railway Co v Main 1895 22 R 912 at p 919: ‘It is a well-settled rule in the construction of the Lands Clauses Act that when lands have been taken in the exercise of powers of compulsory purchase, the owner or occupier, as the case may be, is entitled not only to the market value of his interest but to full compensation for all the loss which he may sustain by being deprived of his land.’ The tribunal do not consider that the reference to ‘full compensation’ can be read as supporting the view that loss, injury or expense reasonably incurred prior to the date of a notice or deemed notice to treat is not to be compensated. On the contrary it is couched in language apt to embrace prior loss provided always that it is naturally and reasonably incurred and can truly be described as loss or expenditure incurred through the claimant being deprived of his land as opposed to something extraneous or due to some independent business decision of his own. Harvey followed Venables without criticism and we can find no contrary statement of principle therein. Romer LJ plainly regarded the main test to be that of remoteness saying at p 14: ‘(objection) might have been raised with regard to the expenditure which was incurred by Mrs Harvey in connection with the abortive purchase of a house which she was advised by her surveyor was not a reasonable residence for her’. But he concluded by saying: ‘It is bad enough in itself for a person to be compulsorily dispossessed of his house, but it is worse still if he has himself to bear expenses of the kind which are in issue in the present case in finding another house in which to live.’ In the light of that dictum, we cannot think that his Lordship, by using the words ‘in consequence of’ rather than ‘by reason of’ in a case in which all the expenditure incurred was after the notice to treat can have intended that expenditure by a displaced house-holder should be disallowed if it preceded that date; nor can we see any reason why there should be such disallowance if the dispossessed claimant is to receive full compensation for all loss and injury sustained by reason of the compulsory acquisition. *See also (1981) 257 EG 391 and 501 at pp 501-502. Then after a sentence which I do not follow, and counsel were unable to explain, the tribunal proceeded: The principle in assessing compensation is that of equivalence, described by Scott LJ in Horn v Sunderland Corporation as: ‘The right to receive a money payment not less than the loss imposed on him in the public interest, but on the other hand, no greater.’  Why then, more particularly since the decision of the House of Lords in Birmingham Corporation v West Midland Baptist (Trust) Association Inc (1969) 211 EG 527 and 629 (HL), should the service of a notice to treat operate so as to prevent full compensation for loss or expenditure reasonably incurred?  As appears from the modern textbooks dealing with the subject, the point is still in law an open one . . . At p 408 the tribunal stated its conclusion thus: The main question, however, recurs, namely whether expenditure in furtherance of mitigation is only compensatable if incurred after the date of service of the notice to treat or whether the claimaint is entitled to have prior expenditure incurred in endeavours to mitigate his loss also taken into consideration. We consider that he can. In our opinion, following Venables, Harvey and the Birmingham Corporation cases, we therefore reject the legal submissions based upon the alleged significance of the deemed notice to treat. In our judgment it is simply a question of circumstances in each case whether particular losses or expenditure claimed as items of compensation under rule (6) were naturally and reasonably incurred by reason of the compulsory acquisition; or, in contrast, were too remote as being independently incurred. And, where questions of anticipatory mitigation of damage arise, whether the steps taken to avoid what would otherwise be greater loss were reasonable steps to take in all the circumstances. Like the Court of Session in Aberdeen City District Council v Sim, I could have contented myself with a simple approval of that decision and the reasons given therefor, but like them have not done so. I regard both the Scottish decisions as of high persuasive authority on a point of law which affects many inhabitants on each side of the Border and ought to be decided in the same way in all the courts of this island. These decisions have the support of the amicus, who submits that they apply to this case, and I would apply them in favour of the appellants unless satisfied that the Act of 1973 has altered the law. If the Scottish decisions are wrong, then the decision under appeal on the construction of the English Act of 1973 is right and this appeal fails. For nobody contended, or could contend, that a displaced person who can avail himself of this statute can be better off in his compensation for disturbance than he would have been if he had not come within those classes whom the statute is intended to benefit. But if the Scottish decisions are right, as I think they are, the remaining question is whether the language of sections 37 and 38 of this Act (and sections 35 and 36 of the Scottish Act, for we have to decide whether Parliament has altered the law of Scotland as well as of England) gives those entitled to the compensation it provides the same or a more restricted right. If those who do not need the Act to obtain compensation for disturbance are entitled to be compensated for such costs and loss as may have been incurred by the appellants on moving house before notice to treat, are those who do need it entitled to the same compensation or does the Act on its true construction exclude such costs and loss from a right to disturbance payments?  Does this ‘new provision for the benefit of persons displaced from land by public authorities’, as the preamble to the Act describes it, apply to such costs and loss? Mr Brown accepts, as does Mr Fletcher for the council, that the object of the new section we have to understand and apply is correctly stated in the general note to this part of the statute which is to be found in 43 Halsbury’s Statutes 3rd ed p 205 and reads: This section constitutes a new right to a payment in favour of persons displaced from land other than agricultural land. The claimant must have been in lawful possession of the land, but need not have had any further interest in it. The payment is, in fact intended primarily to benefit those who do not otherwise qualify for compensation because they have no interest requiring to be purchased. It is also available to those whose compensation under existing legislation is limited to the value of the land as a cleared site. The appellants are admittedly members of the second of those two classes, being under section 59(2) of the Housing Act 1957 entitled to compensation limited to the site value of their land, as the member of the Lands Tribunal has held on their application. They are accordingly capable of benefiting from this new provision, as are those in the first class with minor interests, such as monthly tenants, statutory tenants and licensees. Part III of the Act of 1973 makes ‘Provisions for Benefit of Persons Displaced from Land’ under the heads of Home loss payments (sections 29-33), Farm loss payments (sections 34-36) and Rehousing (sections 39-43). I have already read the relevant provisions of sections 37 and 38. The language of these provisions is, to my mind, like enough to the language in which judges have stated the principle of fully compensating owners dispossessed by compulsory acquisition of their property to indicate the intention of Parliament to give to those classes of person not previously entitled to compensation for disturbance the same right as those previously entitled to it enjoyed, not a reduced or lesser right. As those previously entitled had a right to be paid as compensation for disturbance their expenses or loss reasonably incurred before given notice to treat, actual or deemed, so the newly favoured are now to obtain disturbance payments which include those expenses and loss. Section 37(1) provides that the displacement of the person from the land must be is consequence of the acquisition by the authority (or of the housing order, resolution or undertaking or the redevelopment). Section 38(1) equates the amount of the payment with (a) the reasonable expenses of the person in removing from the land from which he is displaced; (b) the loss he will sustain by reason of the disturbance of his trade or business consequent upon his having to quit the land. I note first the use of the word ‘displaced’ — a word which I think came into familiar use at the end of the last war when what had been loosely called ‘refugees’ were more accurately included in a large, new category of ‘displaced persons’. ‘Displaced’ is used once in Smith v Strathclyde Regional Council in the first passage which I have quoted, instead of the more usual ‘dispossessed’, but as far as I know it makes its first appearance in a statute in Part III of this Act. If its use instead of ‘dispossessed’ has any significance, it is to get rid of the notion which ‘dispossessed’ might convey, that what is being considered is the termination of legal possession as opposed to actual possession, the ending of rights and interests in the land as opposed to occupation of it. A man may be dispossessed when he gives up his right to possession; the date of dispossession may readily be considered the date when he receives notice to treat. A man is displaced when he gives up actual possession; the date of displacement may more easily be said to be the date when he leaves the place, removes from the land, quits the land. And that is what Mr Brown submits that displacement and the date of displacement are. If the person threatened with inevitable dispossession, displacement, removal, having to quit the land — call it what you will — because of compulsory acquisition acts reasonably in moving to other accommodation before he is given notice to treat, or before his land is actually acquired by compulsory purchase, he is then displaced in consequence of the acquisition; he then has to quit his land and quits it; his reasonable expenses are expenses in moving from land from which he is already displaced and the loss he will sustain thereafter by reason of the disturbance then of his trade or business is consequent upon his having to quit the land. Another way of reaching the same result is to regard acquisition as a process, often prolonged, which begins with a resolution by an authority (or perhaps even before, if Aberdeen v Sims was rightly decided and applies to section 37, for there the fees were incurred in the purchase of alternative accommodation before the authority had ever passed a resolution) and is completed by the authority’s entry under a confirmed compulsory purchase order. That is not the ratio of the Scottish decisions, but if it be right, then the temporal as well as the causal connexion between the loss and expense and the acquisition is established. When the completion has to be, as here under Part III of the Housing Act of 1957, ‘so soon as may be’, this wide interpretation of the words ‘the acquisition of land’ is less strained. By whichever route the construction of the sections leads to the inclusion of expenses and loss reasonably incurred before acquisition is completed, it does not contradict any provision that acquisition means acquisition by notice to treat, or that the date of displacement means the date of the notice to treat, because there is no reference to the notice to treat or its date in the sections. It is hardly ever conclusive against the implication of clarifying words in an Act of Parliament that they could have been expressed, and the draftsman might not have had an altogether easy task in incorporating references to the notice to treat in these provisions. But he has not done so and I am not persuaded after the full and helpful arguments we have heard that the Lands Tribunal in England has been right to imply them, more especially as there may be more than one notice to treat and more than one date for the notices to treat in respect of the same land or landowner. In support of the Lands Tribunal’s decision in this and earlier cases, Mr Fletcher points first to the anomaly created by overturning those decisions: section 37(2) then gives mere licensees a more generous compensation than is available to holders of short tenancies under section 121 of the Lands Clauses Consolidation Act 1845 and, since 1965, section 20 of the Compulsory Purchase Act 1965 which replaced it. Those sections give those entitled to compensation under them a right to compensation, not after notice to treat, because they are not entitled to a notice to treat, but after being required to give up possession by notice to quit: R v Stone (1860) LR 1 QB 529; Newham London Borough Council v Benjamin [1968] 1 WLR 694. There is, Mr Fletcher submits, no reason why Parliament should have created this anomaly, and he also submits that the language of the sections reads more naturally to exclude compensation for any loss or expense incurred before the date of the notice to treat. What he says about some of the tenses, eg ‘is displaced’, ‘will sustain’, is, I think, met by the interpretation Mr Brown advises us to put on ‘displaced’ and ‘displacement’. So also the references to ‘in lawful possession’ do not tell against Mr Brown’s construction because the displaced person entitled to compensation is of necessity always in lawful possession actually and legally at the time he quits or removes and is in legal possession thereafter. Section 37(6) and its provision for interest have caused me more difficulty, but Parliament may have considered that most persons disturbed in their residence or business by compulsory acquisition would wait to move until given notice to treat or later, and that those prudent few who moved in anticipation of acquisition should be rewarded by interest over a longer period on unpaid compensation. And, as Mr Brown reminded us, the payment of compensation for loss and expenses incurred in anticipation of acquisition would only be required where they were reasonable and reasonably incurred, and persons who claimed them might often have difficulty in proving that they were reasonably incurred and compensatable accordingly. I have also considered and reconsidered other provisions of the Act such as section 29(2) and (3), to which Mr Fletcher referred us, and section 46(7), to which, as Kerr LJ pointed out, section 38(2) is made subject. Section 29(2) and (3) tell, if they tell any way, against Mr Fletcher, as I think he appreciated before he felt it his duty as counsel to call our attention to it after Mr Brown had finished his reply. Section 29 provides: (2)  A person shall not be entitled to a home loss payment unless throughout a period of not less than five years ending with the date of displacement — (a)  he has been in occupation of the dwelling, or a substantial part of it, as his only or main residence; and (b)  he has been in occupation as aforesaid by virtue of an interest or right to which this section applies. (3)  For the purposes of this section a person shall not be treated as displaced from a dwelling in consequence of the compulsory acquisition of an interest therein if he gives up his occupation thereof before the date on which the acquiring authority were authorised to acquire that interest, but, subject to that, it shall not be necessary for the acquiring authority to have required him to give up his occupation of the dwelling. Subsection (3) seems to cut out of displacement from a dwelling, for the purposes of dating it, any giving up of occupation of it before acquisition or authorisation. If the date of such prior abandonment of occupation could not be the date of displacement, why was it necessary to provide that it should not be so treated — and for the purposes of this section?  Why not for the purposes of section 37 as well as for section 29? Section 46 provides: (1)  Where a person is carrying on a trade or business on any land and, in consequence of the compulsory acquisition of the whole of that land, is required to give up possession thereof to the acquiring authority, then if — (a)  on the date on which he gives up possession as aforesaid he has attained the age of sixty; and (b)  on that date the land is or forms part of a hereditament the annual value of which does not exceed the prescribed amount; and (c)  that person has not disposed of the goodwill of the whole of the trade or business and gives to the acquiring authority the undertakings mentioned in subsection (3) below, the compensation payable to that person in respect of the compulsory acquisition of his interest in the land or, as the case may be, under section 121 of the Lands Clauses Consolidation Act 1845 or section 20 of the Compulsory Purchase Act 1965 (tenants from year to year etc) shall, so far as attributable to disturbance, be assessed on the assumption that it is not reasonably practicable for that person to carry on the trade or business or, as the case may be, the part thereof the goodwill of which he has retained, elsewhere than on that land. Subsection (7): This section shall apply in relation to any disturbance payment assessed in accordance with section 38(1)(b) above as it applies in relation to the compensation mentioned in subsection (1) above, and shall so apply subject to the necessary modifications and as if references to the giving up of possession of land to the acquiring authority in consequence of its compulsory acquisition were references to displacement as mentioned in section 37 above. If requiring sexagenarians to give up possession of land on which they carry on a trade or business be treated as the equivalent of giving notice to treat, then there is in subsection (7) an indication that the date of assessment of compensation for disturbance under section 38 is assumed to be the date of the notice to treat. But I see no compelling need to take the intermediate step of treating the one as equivalent to the other, and the same reasoning might more naturally lead to the conclusion that the date of displacement and assessment of disturbance payments is the date when possession is required by notice of entry. Mr Brown accepts that his construction of section 37 involves the anomaly relied on by Mr Fletcher, but submits that it accords better with the language used by Parliament and its likely intention. Being unable to attribute a priori to the legislature an intention to give new qualifiers for disturbance payments or compensation less than those who qualified for full compensation for all that they spent and lost as the natural and reasonable result of compulsory acquisition, I interpret the sections as entitling those new qualifiers to be compensated under those heads. After all, the local authority is acquiring the house of such persons as the appellants as unfit for human habitation; and, as Kerr LJ suggested, that makes it unreasonable that they should go on occupying it any longer than it takes them to find alternative accommodation, and reasonable that the authority should compensate them for leaving as soon as they can. Parliament may well have recognised their situation and intended to promote their leaving unfit premises of their own accord by requiring the authority to compensate them for so doing. 15 I would therefore allow the appeal and remit the application to the Lands Tribunal to decide whether either appellant has reasonably incurred any reasonable expenses, or loss of business, in and in consequence of moving to other premises. This will involve a more explicit finding as to the exact date when the appellants acquired other premises and vacated the compulsorily purchased premises and Dr Prasad ceased to carry on his medical practice there. Loss of practice due not to his quitting no 38 but to the threat of impending compulsory purchase and demolition of no 38 will not be compensatable. It will be for the member to decide, on the evidence which he has heard and will hear, whether there is any disturbance payment to be made to the appellants in respect of expenses and loss incurred by reason of the compulsory purchase. I should like to hear what my Lords and counsel have to say about the precise form of the order. Agreeing, FOX LJ said: I agree. The issue is whether the appellants were ‘displaced from . . . land in consequence of . . . the acquisition of the land by an authority possessing compulsory purchase powers’. It is said that because they withdrew from the land before the service of a notice to treat (although after the compulsory purchase order) the displacement was not ‘in consequence of’ the compulsory acquisition. It is agreed that, had they remained until after the service of the notice to treat they would have come within the wording which I have quoted. That seems to me to give undue weight to the mere service of a notice to treat in the process of compulsory acquisition. It is, of course, quite true that, in the authorities, the service of a notice to treat has long been described as producing a situation analogous to that of vendor and purchaser. But in relation to the present question it is, I think, of some value to analyse the position further. It is clear that until the parties have agreed the price there is no contract giving rise to a true vendor/purchaser relationship (see Adams v London & Blackwall Railway Co (1850) 2 Macn & G 118 and Harding v Metropolitan Railway Co (1872) LR 7 Ch 154). The position, as I understand it, is as stated by Wilberforce J in Capital Investments v Wednesfield Urban District Council [1965] Ch 774 at p 794 as follows: There is by the mere service of a notice to treat no consensus between the parties because at this point the price has not been fixed. A notice to treat does nothing more than establish conditions in which a contract might come into existence, either a voluntary contract or a statutory contract. As a matter of authority it seems to me that the position is clearly established in Haynes v Haynes (1861) 1 D & S 426. . . . It has been said that for certain purposes and to a certain extent the notice to treat constitutes the position of vendor and purchaser but in the same passages in which this statement has been made it has also been made clear that the notice does not constitute a contract . . . It was, therefore, held in the Capital Investments case that, until ascertainment of the price, there was no estate contract capable of registration under the Land Charges Act 1925, even though notice to treat had been given. The result, it seems to me, is that where there is merely a service of a notice to treat (the purchase price not yet having been determined) there is no ‘acquisition’ of the land by the acquiring authority. Once the purchase price has been determined and in consequence a specifically enforceable contract has come into existence, the position is otherwise. The acquiring authority becomes the owner of the land in equity and the vendor’s interest is transferred to the purchase money. That was the point in Haynes v Haynes (supra). The testator upon whom a notice to treat had been served died before the price was ascertained. By his will he gave his lands in one way and his personalty in another. It was held that, there being no contract, the land devolved as land and not as personalty. The service of a notice to treat is not, therefore, an ‘acquisition’ of the land any more than is the compulsory purchase order. It certainly has important consequences (the landowner, for example, can insist upon the purchase price being determined), but it is simply a step in the process of acquisition just as the order is. It was stated in this court in Harvey v Crawley Development Corporation [1957] 1 QB 485 (per Denning LJ at p 492) that compensation for disturbance under rule (6) of the Act of 1919 includes all damages directly consequent on the taking of the land under statutory powers; and (per Romer LJ at p 494) that any loss sustained by a dispossessed owner which flows from a compulsory acquisition ‘may properly be regarded as the subject of compensation for disturbance provided first that it is not too remote and secondly that it is the natural and reasonable consequence of the dispossession of the owner’. It is difficult to see why, in giving effect to those principles of compensation, loss should be disallowed by reason of the fact that the loss was suffered before rather than after the mere notice to treat. In neither case can one say, in temporal terms, that it was ‘in consequence of the acquisition’ because in neither case, at the date of the loss, had any acquisition occurred. The property interests remain unaltered. What has happened is that the process of compulsory acquisition has caused the displacement. In practical terms it could not be a sensible rule that only loss arising after the completion of the acquisition could be recoverable because in most cases a landowner would have to make necessary arrangements, which would involve him in monetary loss, before the completion. Some earlier date must therefore be chosen. As between the date of the publication of the compulsory purchase order, or an earlier date such as the date of the authority’s resolution which initiates the process of acquisition, and the date of the notice to treat I see no decisive consideration in law or in convenience, in favour of the last. That is not to say that the date when the alleged loss is suffered is wholly irrelevant for all purposes. It may have some evidential significance in that the earlier the date of the loss the more difficult it might be to establish that the damage does in fact come within the principle of the Harvey case. I would allow the appeal and make the appropriate order. Also agreeing, KERR LJ said: I have found this a difficult case in a field with which I have little familiarity. In the upshot, however, I am left in no doubt that this appeal should be allowed for the reasons indicated in both the foregoing judgments, and I will only add a short summary of my own conclusions. In the ultimate analysis the issue turns on the question whether the wording of section 37(1) of the Land Compensation Act 1973 compels the conclusion that Parliament intended, in making ‘new provision for the benefit of persons displaced from land by public authorities’ in this Act, that the qualification for disturbance payments should be narrower than the basis for analogous rights to compensation under legislation which has been in force since 1845 and which has been interpreted by the courts in a wider sense both in England and Scotland. It is said, however, that this is the effect of the words ‘displaced . . . in consequence of the acquisition . . .’ in section 37(1)(a). It is said that there can be no ‘acquisition’ before a notice to treat has been served, and that the words ‘in consequence of’ must therefore — or perhaps in any event — be construed restrictively in a purely temporal sense: unless the (subsequently) displaced person has remained in occupation until the service of the notice to treat, he has not been ‘displaced’ and is therefore disqualified from any entitlement to any disturbance payment. In the same way as my Lords, there are a number of reasons why I cannot accept this construction. As shown by the authorities reviewed in the judgment of Stephenson LJ, it is in itself highly improbable that Parliament intended in 1973 that the words ‘in consequence of’ should, in this context, have a purely temporal, as opposed to a causative, meaning. Moreover, as pointed out in the judgment of FOX LJ, the service of the notice to treat is no more than one, albeit essential, step in the total process of ‘acquisition of the land by an authority possessing compulsory purchase powers’. Unlike, for instance, section 53 of this Act in relation to agricultural land, sections 37 and 38 contain no reference to notices to treat but refer merely to ‘acquisition’ in the present context. However, ‘acquisition’ is a process which in itself is not completed by the service of a notice to treat. So why should the service of this notice be the crucial moment by reference to which only a subsequent displacement would qualify for compensation under these provisions?  I think that this construction gives an unduly narrow meaning both to ‘acquisition’ and ‘in consequence of’, and that the correct interpretation of section 37 is in line with the Scottish case to which Stephenson LJ has referred. In rejecting the respondents’ narrow construction I am also influenced by the consideration that its implications appear to fly in the face of commonsense when one has regard to the practicalities. Long before October 1979, when Dr Prasad removed himself, his wife and his practice from this house, its occupation by anyone was doomed: see in particular sections 43 and 47 of the Housing Act 1957. Mr Fletcher expressly conceded, as I took down his words, that16 ‘under Part III of this Act (that is the 1957 Act) it was inevitable that the authority had to proceed to notice to treat, entry and demolition’. Why, then, should the owners’ entitlement to a disturbance payment depend upon their remaining in occupation of an unfit house right up to the moment of an inevitable notice to treat, to be followed inevitably thereafter by a compulsory displacement?  I can see no sense, let alone merit, in a construction of section 37 which leads to this result, and I do not think its wording compels this conclusion. I therefore agree that this appeal should be remitted to the Lands Tribunal to assess any disturbance payment to which the appellants may be entitled.