Landlord and Tenant - Equitable chargee entitled to relief from forfeiture of lease

- payment of arrears of rent and interest accruing a condition of relief - benefits enjoyed by persons in actual occupation during period in respect of payment to be brought into accountBland v Ingrams Estates Ltd and Others (No 2); CA (Lords Justice Chadwick and Hale):11 July 2001The claimant was the holder of registered charging orders of a lease of business premises granted in 1994.

In 1996 the lease was forfeited for non-payment of rent by re-entry of the landlord who shortly afterwards granted a new tenancy of the premises.The new tenants took with constructive notice of the previous tenant's right to seek relief from forfeiture.

The tenant did not exercise that right, but following a ruling by the Court of Appeal [2001] 2 WLR 1638 the equitable chargee was entitled to pursue a claim for relief from forfeiture.Robert Denman (instructed by Joseph Aaron & Co) for the claimant; Timothy Fancourt (instructed by Collyer-Bristow) for the landlord; Justin Althaus (instructed by Armstrong & Co) for the new tenants.Held, giving judgment on the terms of relief, that when the court exercised discretion indirectly to grant relief from forfeiture to an equitable chargee of a lease of business premises, forfeited for non-payment of rent where the tenant himself did not seek relief, and payment of arrears of rent and interest accruing was a condition of relief from forfeiture, it was right to bring into account the benefits enjoyed by the persons in actual occupation during the period or part of the period of inchoate forfeiture in respect of which that payment was made; that when assessing in what amount the benefits were to be brought into account, it was enough to hold that, as in the case of a mortgagee who went into possession of mortgaged property for his own benefit, a lessor who used the property for his own business during a period of inchoate forfeiture should be charged with a full occupation rent.