The court considered the relationship between statutory provisions and the terms of a tenancy agreement.
Held: Brandon LJ said: ‘In the various Housing and rent Acts the legislature did not seek to interfere with the common law principles on which contractual tenancies, whether periodic or for a term certain, could be brought to an end. In the case of periodic tenancies the legislature left landlords free to bring them to an end by the service and expiry of valid notices to quit. In the case of tenancies for a term certain, the legislature left such tenancies to come to an end automatically by effluxion of time. What the legislature did, however, in order to protect the person who had been a contractual tenant before his contractual tenancy came to an end, was to create a new relationship between the tenant and his former contractual landlord, which Scrutton LJ described . . . in Remon v City of London Real Property Co Ltd [1921] 1 KB 49,58, as a ‘statutory tenancy’, the parties to which were the former contractual tenant, from then on described as a ‘statutory tenant’, and the former contractual landlord or his successor in title. . . .’ but ‘By contrast, in the Act of 1980 the legislature went about the matter in quite a different way. It abolished altogether the common law principles on which contractual tenancies, both periodic and for a term certain, could be brought or come to an end. It did this by providing, first, that, on the expiry of a contractual tenancy for a term certain, there should come into existence a periodic tenancy in its place, unless a further contractual tenancy for a term certain should be granted: section 29(1) and (2) [now section 86 of the 1985 Act]; and, secondly, that a periodic tenancy, whether having that character originally, or coming into being on the expiry of a term certain, should not be capable of being brought to an end by a landlord except by the latter obtaining an order of the court for possession: section 32(1), or, in cases where provisions for re-entry or forfeiture are relied on, an order terminating the secure tenancy: section 32(2).’
‘In Remon’s case the Court of Appeal felt bound to give strained and unnatural meanings to perfectly ordinary words, such as ‘tenant’, ‘tenancy’ and ‘let’. It did so for one reason and one reason only, namely that unless those words were given strained and unnatural meanings, the manifest purpose of the Act of 1920 – to protect from eviction persons whose contractual tenancies had been brought or come to an end – would be defeated. In the three cases with which these appeals are concerned, I do not see any compelling reason why the court should follow its predecessor in Remon’s case by giving a strained and unnatural meaning to the expression ‘let under a secure tenancy’ as used in sections 33(1) and 34(1) of the Act of 1980. The ordinary and natural meaning of the expression is ‘let under a secure tenancy at the date to which each subsection relates’, that is to say the date of commencement of an action for possession, in the case of section 33(1), and the date of deciding whether an order for possession should be made in such an action in the case of section 34(1).’
Judges:
Brandon LJ
Citations:
[1981] 1 WLR 650
Statutes:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Citing:
Explained – Remon v City of London Real Property Co Ltd CA 1921
The court was asked whether the plaintiff, a tenant of rooms to which (once enacted) the Act of 1920 applied and who had been excluded from possession by the landlord’s re-entry on the day that the Act came into force following service of a notice . .
Cited by:
Cited – North British Housing Association Ltd v Sheridan CA 29-Jul-1999
The respondent appealed against an order for possession made on the grounds that he had been convicted of breach of an order under the 1997 Act in harassing his daughter who lived nearby the premises. The tenant argued that the agreement had . .
Cited – Banjo v London Borough of Brent CA 17-Mar-2005
The tenant had occupied the premises under a long lease which expired by effluxion of time. The landlord failed to take any steps to retake possession, and the tenant continued as a tenant at will, paying no rent. The landlord eventually issued . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Housing
Updated: 30 April 2022; Ref: scu.221433