The applicant claimed the right to purchase the freehold reversion for her home. The defendant said it was not held under a low rent so as to qualify, since the rent exceeded the rateable value as assessed. The rating list had been altered meantime from the two cottages to one combined listing.
Held: Looking at all the words of the statute, and applying Dixon v Allgood, the landlord’s appeal succeeded. May LJ: ‘the effect of the application of section 25(1) of the 1977 Act to the ascertainment of the rateable value of the property is to direct attention to the hereditament or hereditaments whose rateable value is shown in the valuation list. For section 4A(2)(b), the rateable is that of ‘the property’, not of ‘the house’ or ‘the house and premises’. At the date of the commencement of the tenancy, the property here consisted of ‘more than one such hereditament’, that is more than one hereditament ‘for which a rateable value [was] then shown in the valuation list’. The property, therefore, had a rateable value which was not nil at the commencement of the tenancy. The rateable value was the aggregation of the rateable values of the two hereditaments then shown in the valuation list – pounds 42, and the rent of pounds 100 was not less than two-thirds of this rateable value.’
Judges:
May LJ, Latham LJ
Citations:
[2006] EWCA Civ 709, [2006] 1 WLR 2097
Links:
Statutes:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Citing:
Cited – Malekshad v Howard de Walden Estates Limited HL 5-Dec-2002
A house and an adjoining building had been first demised under one lease, then separated vertically. Two separate residential properties now existed.
Held: The vertical division meant that the two houses could not be enfranchised as one under . .
Cited – Dixon v Allgood HL 1987
The applicant tenant occupied property originally a pair of semi-detached derelict cottages and six acres of land. He successively reconstructed each cottage, initially living in one of them and sub-letting the other; constructed a five door garage . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Landlord and Tenant
Updated: 11 September 2022; Ref: scu.242278