Leasehold enfranchisement - disposal by landlord of residential estate comprising four structures separated from each other - landlord not required to sever disposal into four parts and serve different notices in respect of each structure where all tenants sharing use of same 'appurtenant premises'

Long Acre Securities Ltd v Karet: ChD (Mr Geoffrey Vos QC sitting as a deputy High Court judge):3 March 2004

The claimant was landlord of a residential estate made up of four structures, and served notice on the tenants of its intention to dispose of the leasehold pursuant to section 5 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 as amended.

By section 5(3), where a landlord intended to dispose of an interest in more than one building, he had to sever the transaction so as to deal with each building separately.

The defendant, one of the residential tenants, challenged the validity of the notice on the ground that section 5(3) required that the landlord serve different notices for each of the four structures.

The claimant sought a declaration that service by the landlord of a single notice for all four structures was legally valid.

Philip Jones (instructed by Mackrell Turner Garrett) for the claimant; Simon Adamyk (instructed by Adler & Adler) for the defendant.

Held, granting the declaration, that the Act only made sense if construed in such a way that a landlord of an estate comprising multiple structures did not need to serve a separate notice in respect of each structure if the tenants in each structure shared with tenants from the other structures the use of the same 'appurtenant premises' as defined in section 4(4); and that, since it was reasonably clear that all the flats shared use of the same appurtenant premises, the service of a single notice was legally valid.