Megaw LJ said: ‘Section 23 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1927 lays down the manner in which service of a notice can be effected. It is provided, as what I may call at any rate the primary means of effecting service, that it is to be done either by ‘personal’ service or by leaving the notice at the last-known place of abode, or by sending it through the post in a registered letter, or (as now applies) in a recorded delivery letter. If any of those methods are adopted, they being the primary methods laid down, and, in the event of dispute, it is proved that one of those methods has been adopted, then sufficient service is proved. Thus, if it is proved, in the event of dispute, that a notice was sent by recorded delivery, it does not matter that that recorded delivery letter may not have been received by the intended recipient. It does not matter, even if it were to be clearly established that it had gone astray in the post. There is the obvious, simple way of dealing with a notice of this sort. But, as I think may be assumed for the purposes of this appeal, if the person who gives the notice sees fit not to use one of those primary methods, but to send the notice through the post, not registered and not by recorded delivery, that will nevertheless be good notice, if in fact the letter is received by the person to whom the notice has to be given. But a person who chooses to use that method instead of one of the primary methods is taking the risk that, if the letter is indeed lost in the post, notice will not have been given.’
Megaw LJ
[1975] 1 WLR 1181
Landlord and Tenant Act 1927 23
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Beanby Estates Ltd v Egg Stores (Stamford Hill) Ltd ChD 9-May-2003
The landlord had served a notice under the 1954 Act. The tenant served a counter notice, but the question was whether he was late, or out of time.
Held: The combination of the various provisions meant that the landlord’s notice had irrevocably . .
Cited – C A Webber (Transport) Ltd v Railtrack plc CA 15-Jul-2003
A notice served under s25 of the 1954 Act, being sent by recorded delivery to the tenant at its place of abode, was irrebuttably deemed to have been served on the day it was posted. Section 23 of the 1927 Act operated to disapply section 7 of the . .
Cited – Railtrack Plc v Gojra and Gojra CA 28-Nov-1997
The tenant served two notices under the Act.
Held: The tenant’s application was out of time. If the first notice was valid, a later notice did not act to restart time running and the application for a new tenancy had to be begun within four . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Landlord and Tenant
Updated: 22 January 2022; Ref: scu.182408
