Landlord and tenant

Protected tenancy - landlord requiring access to tenant's room to do works to provide 'suitable alternative accommodation' for tenant - order granting access without tenant's consent unlawful where no grant application made

Akram v Adam: CA (Lord Justice Chadwick and Sir Denis Henry): 6 November 2002

The tenant had a protected tenancy of a ground floor room, with shared use of kitchen and bathroom, in the landlord's house.

The landlord's application for a possession order in respect of the room was refused but the judge made a declaration that proposals by the landlord to convert and extend the tenant's room into a self-contained unit would, when completed, provide 'suitable alternative accommodation' for the tenant for the purposes of section 98(1)(a) of the Rent Act 1977.

Unable to agree with the tenant for the work to be carried out, the landlord applied under section 116 of the 1977 Act (as amended by section 103 of, and paragraph 1 of schedule 1 to, the Housing Grants, Construction and Regeneration Act 1996) for an order for access to the tenant's room.

The judge granted the application.

The tenant appealed.

Jane Evans-Gordon, pro bono, for the tenant; John Robson (instructed by David Perry, Chelmsford) for the landlord.

Held, allowing the appeal, that an order under section 116(2) of the 1977 Act empowering the landlord to enter and carry out works in the absence of the tenant's agreement could be made only where the condition specified in section 116(3), that the works were the subject of an approved grant application, was satisfied; and that, accordingly, since no grant application had been made and the judge in making the order had not considered the statutory requirements or addressed the issue of providing the tenant with interim accommodation, the order giving the landlord access was not lawful.