Leasehold enfranchisement - qualified tenant serving initial notice of collective enfranchisement - tenant producing office copies of register bearing tenants' names as leaseholders dated eight weeks before date of initial notice - failure to produce updated office copy not amounting to deemed withdrawal of notice

Raymere Ltd v Belle Vue Gardens Ltd: CA (Lords Justice Brooke, Jonathan Parker and Mr Justice Holman): 17 July 2003

On 6 August 2001, a qualified tenant served on the landlord an initial notice pursuant to section 13 of the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993, exercising his right, and that of all other tenants, to collective enfranchisement in respect of three blocks of flats.

On 29 August, the tenant, in response to the landlord's request dated 10 August, produced office copies of the register entries bearing the tenants' names issued on 12 June 2001, in purported compliance with section 20 of the Act.

On 11 September, the landlord wrote to the tenants contending that the tenants had failed to deduce title confirming their ownership of the appropriate leaseholds as at the date of the initial notice which constituted the deemed withdrawal of the notices within the meaning of section 20(3).

The judge rejected the landlord's contention.

The landlord appealed.

Anthony Radevsky (instructed by Derek T Wilkinson & Co, Bournemouth) for the landlord; Gabriel Fadipe (instructed by Preston & Redman, Bournemouth) for the tenant.

Held, dismissing the appeal, that the production of office copy entries which established that the tenants in question were, on 12 June 2001, the registered proprietors of the respective leasehold interest particularised in the initial notices within 21 days of the request was sufficient compliance with section 20; and that any theoretical possibility of some later registered disposition of the leasehold interest raised by the landlord on the fact that the subsisting entries on the register related to a date earlier than the relevant date, was to be resolved in proceedings brought by the nominee purchaser relating to validity of notice under section 22.