Landlord and tenant: Acquisition by tenants

Tenants claiming entitlement to acquisition of freehold under part 1 of Leasehold Reform Act 1967 - landlords asserting tenants' notices failing to meet statutory requirements - landlords seeking declaration - application allowed - appeal dismissedSpeedwell Estates Ltd and another v Dalziel and others: Court of Appeal: Lords Justice Pill, May, Mr Justice Rimer:31 July 2001The applicant landlords were involved in three separate actions, each of which raised the same issue.

The respondents to these actions were tenants, each of whom held a house under a long lease at a low rent.

The tenants each served notice of their desire to acquire the freeholds of their houses, under part 1 of the Leasehold Reform Act 1967, as amended.The landlords asserted that the notices were invalid as they failed to satisfy statutory requirements.

They subsequently sought declarations that the tenants were not entitled to acquire the freeholds of the properties, arguing that schedule 3 to the Act required that a tenant's notice under part 1 of the Act 'shall be in the prescribed form, and shall contain certain specified particulars'.

They submitted that although paragraph 6(3) of schedule 3 provided that 'any inaccuracy' in such particulars would not invalidate the notice, the tenants' errors could not fairly be characterised as mere inaccuracies.

The landlords claimed that the tenants' notices failed to: l Identify the instruments creating their tenancies; l Provide any information as to the rateable values of the houses sufficient to show that the rent was a low rent; and,l Provide particulars as to the tenants' occupation of the houses.

The landlords contended that although schedule 3 did not require the tenants to provide the information sought in boxes 7 and 8, it did require the tenants to use 'the prescribed form', namely form 1, which itself required the provision of that information.Agreeing with the landlords, the judge made the declarations sought.

The tenants appealed, accepting that their notices contained imperfections, but arguing that the judge had erred in finding them invalid.Held: The appeals were dismissed.

As a consequence of the omissions, the tenants' notices were not in the correct form, and could not be said to have substantially satisfied the requirements of schedule 3 to the Act.No serious attempt had been made to provide in the notices the information required by the statutory scheme.

The omissions included the core information required by box 6 of the prescribed form and a complete failure to provide any answers to boxes 7 and 8.The omissions could not be cured by the techniques of interpretation contemplated and applied in Mannai Ltd v Eagle Star Life Assurance Co Ltd [1997] 1 EGLR 57.

Accordingly, the judge had reached the correct conclusion.Jodie James-Stadden (instructed by Grove Tompkins Bosworth, of Birmingham) appeared for the applicants; Nigel Gerald (instructed by Brown Holliday & Clements, of North Shields) appeared for the respondents.