A weekly tenant entered into an agreement with his landlord for tenancy for 1-year of a shop premises at a rent of pounds 3 a week period at the end of the year who held over at the same round and later was given notice to quit on the basis that he held a weekly tenancy. He claimed compensation, or, alternatively, a new lease on the landlord and Tenant Act 1927 sections for 1(5), 1(2), and he applied to the court therefore, but without success.
Held: It was essential to the presumption of a yearly tenancy on the determination of a letting for a year, or for a term of years, that the rent should be expressed as an annual sum; that presumption was rebutted where, as here, the rent was expressed to be payable as a weekly rent and not as an installment of the rent fixed for the one years tenancy. The tenancy, therefore, was a weekly one, and the notice to quit was valid.
Per Jenkins LJ: at the highest in favour of the tenant the position, so far as it rested on the tenancy agreement, was equivocal and, therefore, other evidence might be resorted to, to ascertain the true intentions of the parties; any doubts as to their intentions was resolved in favour of the landlord by the fact that the notice to quit expressly described the new tenancy as a week to tenancy, and that this view of the position was accepted by the tenant who made his application under the landlord and Tenant Act 2017, on the footing that he had held the premises on a weekly tenancy.
‘when, as here, a term comes to an end one has, of course, to consider what inferences are properly to be drawn from the payment and acceptance of rent. That is the basis of the presumption. In the cases in the books the rent is expressed to be so much per year and if one takes the extreme case in which the rent being so expressed is to be payable weekly, when the landlord accepts a weekly sum what he is accepting is an instalment of the agreed figure for a yearly rent. One, therefore, sees from that the force of the line of argument which has led the Court in those cases to presume a tenancy for a further year. But in a case like the present where the rent is expressed to be per week I think when the fixed period has come to an end one should net presume anything but a weekly tenancy, namely, a tenancy for the period in respect of which the rent is expressed. ‘
Somervell, Jenkins, Hodson LJJ
[1952] EWCA Civ 1, [1952] 2 All ER 945, [1953] 1 QB 146, [1952] 2 TLR 809
Bailii
England and Wales
Citing:
Cited – Ladies’ Hosiery and Underwear Ltd v Carter ChD 1929
The lease in was to let the premises for a term of three years commencing from October the 12th, 1914, at a weekly peat of pounds 2 to be paid every week.
Held: Where a tenant holds over after the expiry of the lease and pays, or expressly . .
Doubted – Covered Markets Ltd v Green 1947
In 1934 or 1935 the landlord granted to the tenant a lease of a lock-up fish shop for a period of 7 years, at a rent of pounds 3 payable weekly in advance. The tenant paid that amount every Monday throughout the term of the lease and thereafter . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Updated: 29 August 2021; Ref: scu.262861
