The Court considered the requirements for terminating a lease of business premises under the 1954 Act and supporting Regulations . The Act expressly provided that notice could be served by registered post in a letter addressed to the tenant’s last known place of abode. The landlord’s solicitors had sent, by registered post, an unsigned notice to quit accompanied by a letter signed by them. This was held sufficient.
But Lord Denning observed that ‘I do not think that a tenant can avoid the effects of a notice like this which is properly sent by registered post to him by saying that he did not take it out of the envelope or read it’.
Edmund Davies LJ said: ‘Based upon considerations mainly of business efficacy, there is a long-standing presumption in our law that a letter, duly addressed, pre-paid and posted, which is not returned to the sender has in fact been received by the addressee – unless he can establish the contrary. The usefulness of a presumption of this kind would be destroyed if the addressee could nevertheless be heard to say: ‘Although I received the postal packet quite safely, I did not read the contents,’ or ‘I did not examine the postal packet to see that I had extracted all that it contained’.’
Lord Denning
[1969] 2 P and CR 802
Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, Landlord and Tenant (Notices) Regulations 1954
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust v Haywood SC 25-Apr-2018
Notice of dismissal begins when received by worker
The court was asked: ‘If an employee is dismissed on written notice posted to his home address, when does the notice period begin to run? Is it when the letter would have been delivered in the ordinary course of post? Or when it was in fact . .
These lists may be incomplete.
Updated: 19 July 2021; Ref: scu.666007