Tenants who used the premises which consisted of a yard, partly covered with cinders, on which stood only a wooden garage, covered about one-third of the site and a brick boundary wall adjacent to the highway for business purposes, applied for a new tenancy under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 Part 2. The landlords who had purchased the premises only a few months previously opposed the application on a ground which they stated in their notice and in the answer to the application as ‘that on the termination of the current tenancy we intend to demolish or reconstruct the whole of substantial part of the premises or carry out substantial work for reconstruction on the whole or part of the land and that we could not reasonably do so without obtaining possession of the premises’. They intended to demolish the garage and wall (which were the only premises on the holding that could be demolished) and to concrete the site, their reason for this being that they could not obtain planning permission to erect a shed on their own adjacent promises unless they provided within their own curtilage a turning space for lorries.
Held: 1) this notice, although it differed from the wording of section 30(1)(f) of the 1954 Act sufficiently revealed on which of the terms set out in section 30(1) he landlord’s were relying, and entitled landlords to oppose the application on the ground set out in paragraph (f) 2) the application for a new tenancy must be refused by virtue of section 30(1)(f) of the 1954 Act because the landlord’s intention to demolish the shed and wall, the only buildings on the site, was an intention to demolish the whole of the ‘premises comprised in in the holding’ within the meaning of section 30(1)(f) as distinct from the whole of the holding itself
Semble: concreting the site could amount to substantial work of construction within the meaning of section 30(1)(f)
Diplock LJ said that Betty’s Cafes must be regarded as having definitively laid to rest the concept of the primary purpose floated in Atkinson v Bettison . He observed (p 1251) that the fallacy in that case lay in the proposition that ‘one had got to look and see what the primary intention or purpose or motive of the landlord was.’
Diplock LJ
[1966] 1 WLR 1244, [1996] 2 All ER 966, 110 Sol Jo 387
Landlord and Tenant 1954 30(1)(f)
England and Wales
Citing:
Cited – Betty’s Cafe Ltd v Phillips Furnishing Stores Ltd HL 1958
On a renewal of a tenancy a landlord’s counter-notice under section 26(6) relied on section 30(1)(f) and (g).
Held: (Lord Keith dissenting) The court was bound to have regard to the position as it was on the date of the order. The landlord . .
Overruled – Atkinson v Bettison CA 1955
A landlord purchased the reversion of a lease of a shop the building on three floors, and two years later, the tenancy being near its end, the tenant applied to the county court for the grant of a new tenancy under the landlord and Tenant Act 1954 . .
Cited by:
Cited – S Franses Limited v The Cavendish Hotel (London) Ltd SC 5-Dec-2018
The question which arises on this appeal is whether it is open to the landlord to oppose the grant of a new business tenancy if the works which he says that he intends to carry out have no purpose other than to get rid of the tenant and would not be . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Landlord and Tenant
Updated: 29 November 2021; Ref: scu.670123
