A landlord’s notice under section 4 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 had been served on the tenant’s solicitors, who had confirmed that they had authority to accept service. Later the tenant challenged the validity of the service.
Held: Service of a notice under the Act on the tenant’s solicitors was valid and effective. They were its duly authorised agents: ‘In the circumstances we can see no good reason why section 23(1) or anything else should prevent the ordinary rules as to service of notice as between landlord and tenant, and the ordinary rules of agency, from operating in the present case. As we have already said, it is common ground that, under the general law of landlord and tenant, it is possible for good service of a landlord’s notice to be effected by serving it on the duly authorised agent of the tenant (and vice versa).’
and: ‘This is a subsection appearing in an Act which . . contains a number of provisions requiring the giving of notice by one person to another and correspondingly entitling that other person to receive it. In our judgment, the object of its inclusion … is not to protect the person upon whom the right to receive the notice is conferred by other statutory provisions. On the contrary, section 23(1) is intended to assist the person who is obliged to serve the notice, by offering him choices of mode of service which will be deemed to be valid service, even if in the event the intended recipient does not in fact receive it .’
Slade LJ
[1989] 1 EGLR 109, (1988) 57 P and CR 359, Independent 10-Oct-1988
Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 4, Landlord and Tenant Act 1927 23(1))
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Naidu v Yenula Properties Ltd CA 23-May-2002
This was a second appeal, this time by a former tenant and was as to whether a tenancy was a shorthold tenancy or otherwise. The judge had found that the tenancy commenced in 1995, and no notice of shorthold tenancy having been given, it was an . .
Cited – Yenula Properties Ltd v Naidu ChD 18-Jul-2002
The landlord appealed a finding of the county court that a notice of assured shorthold tenancy needed to be served on the tenant personally. Here the notice had been served on the proposed tenant’s solicitors.
Held: Though Galinski applied to . .
Cited – Blunden v Frogmore Investments Ltd CA 30-Apr-2002
The tenant had a lease of business premises. The premises were damaged in a terrorist attack, and the landlord served a notice terminating the lease. The lease gave the right to the landlord to determine the lease if the property was incapable of . .
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 . .
Applied – 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 . .
Preferred – Commercial Union Life Assurance Co Ltd v Moustafa 1999
A landlord gave notice to the original lessees of business premises, under section 17 of the 1995 Act. It was sent by recorded delivery to the lessees’ last known residential address but was returned to the sender by the Royal Mail. Nevertheless the . .
Cited – UKI (Kingsway) Ltd v Westminster City Council SC 17-Dec-2018
Short issue as to the requirements for valid ‘service’ of a completion notice so as to bring a newly completed building within liability for non-domestic rates. The notice had been served by email where no statutory authority existed for this.
Landlord and Tenant
Updated: 31 December 2021; Ref: scu.179823