Landlord and tenant

Fair rent assessment - assessment of scarcity of accommodation - cautious use of local authority housing register allowedForebury Estates Ltd v Chiltern Thames and Eastern Rent Assessment Panel (Chairman) and Others: QBD (Keene J): 20 June 2000

The appellant was dissatisfied with rent assessments made by the respondent and appealed to the High Court.

One of the grounds of appeal was that the panel had wrongly taken into account the local authority housing register when assessing the scarcity of accommodation in the locality for the purposes of adjusting the market rent.David Carter for the appellant (instructed by Mills & Reeve, Norwich); Martin Rodger (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) for the respondent.Held, dismissing the appeal, that local authority lists were not wholly irrelevant, since a high demand for public sector housing might have an indirect effect on the market; but that the panel should use the lists with caution.