Two rooms were let to the proprietor of an adjoining hotel as additional accommodation for the hotel. They were used mainly for guests but occasionally for the hotel tenant’s family or staff. One such claimed security of tenure.
Held: The claim failed. The room was not let as a dwelling: ‘the real fundamental object of the Act’ was in ‘protecting a tenant from being turned out of his home.’ The tenant’s claim for protection was rejected on the ground that the premises were not a dwelling. They were not ‘the home of anybody; they were a mere annexe or overflow of the hotel.’ However, a single room may be a dwelling-house.
Lord Greene MR said: ‘It must not be thought for a moment that I am throwing any doubt on the proposition that where there is a letting to a man of one room which is the only place where he moves and has his being, that circumstance will prevent the room being a ‘dwelling’ within the meaning of the Act, but here one has the activities connected with the dwelling of all these people divided between two tenements. Their main activities of living are conducted in the hotel. They go out to sleep in these rooms – sometimes the guests, sometimes the servants, and so on. Where is the ‘dwelling’? It seems to me clear that this annexe or accretion to the accommodation of the hotel cannot be regarded as a ‘dwelling,’ much less as a ‘separate dwelling.”
Lord Greene MR
[1948] 2 All ER 189
Rent Restriction Act
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Uratemp Ventures Limited v Collins HL 11-Oct-2001
Can a single room within a hotel comprise a separate dwelling within the 1988 Act and be subject to an assured tenancy?
Held: A single room can be a dwelling. Each case must be interpreted in its own light as a question of fact, but respecting . .
Cited – A G Securities v Vaughan; Antoniades v Villiers and Bridger HL 10-Nov-1988
In Antoniades, the two tenants occupied an attic, living together. Each had at the same time signed identical agreements purporting to create licences. The landlord had reserved to himself the right to occupy the property and to allow others to . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Housing
Leading Case
Updated: 31 October 2021; Ref: scu.181201
