The claimant sought an order allowing the sale of the freehold of the building where she occupied an apartment. The trustees, when proposing to sell the building to the trustees of the Wellcome Trust, should have served notice under section 5 of the Act on the appellant and other qualifying tenants. The section provides for the service of notices by a landlord who proposes to make a relevant disposal.
Held: The ‘Relevant disposal’ by a Landlord happens on completion, not on exchange of contracts. Sir Thomas Bingham MR said: ‘The Act provides that if, in certain closely defined situations, a landlord proposes to dispose of his interest in premises of a certain kind, the tenants living in those premises shall have a priority right to acquire that interest on the same terms as those on which the landlord is willing to dispose of the interest to another. The long title of the 1987 Act describes it as ‘An Act to confer on tenants of flats rights with respect to the acquisiton by them of their landlord’s reversion”
and ‘the choice between the competing contentions . . must be governed by the proper construction of the 1987 Act and not be consideration of how the proper construction may in practice affect either one party or the other.’
Judges:
Sir Thomas Bingham MR
Citations:
Times 20-Feb-1996, [1996] 2 All ER 220
Statutes:
Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 4
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
See Also – Mainwaring and Yeoman’s Row Management Limited v Trustees of Henry Smith’s Charity (No 2) CA 3-Oct-1996
The tenants had sought to purchase the freehold under the 1987 Act. One tenant having signed an ‘irrevocable’ agreement to participate, withdrew his involvement in the purchase, and the remaining number of tenants were no longer a sufficient . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Landlord and Tenant
Updated: 27 October 2022; Ref: scu.83336