Cases - Leaseholders Of Foundling Court And O’Donnell Court v The London Borough Of Camden & Ors

Record details

Name

Leaseholders Of Foundling Court And O’Donnell Court v The London Borough Of Camden & Ors

Date

[2016]

Citation

UKUT 366 (LC)

Legislation

• Landlord and Tenant Act 1985
• Service Charges (Consultation Requirements) (England) Regulations 2003

Keywords

Service charges – Consultation – Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, section 20, section 20ZA, section 18, section 27A –Service Charges (Consultation Requirements) (England) Regulations 2003

Summary

The Tribunal was asked to determine at a preliminary hearing a number of issues raised by leaseholders of flats within 2 blocks. The main issue of general importance that had to be determined related to the consultation requirements contained in Part 2 of Schedule 4 of the Service Charges (Consultation Requirements) (England) (Regulations) 2003 (the Regulations). The issue was whether, when the tenant of a dwelling was obliged to pay a service charge to his or her intermediate landlord in respect of the cost of works carried out by a superior landlord, the requirements imposed by the 2003 Regulations to consult the tenant before the works were carried out must be satisfied by the superior landlord or by the intermediate landlord.

In considering whether the consultation requirements have been satisfied the starting point is to identify the person who is required to undertake the consultation. Regulation 1(3) of the Regulations applied ‘where a landlord…intends to carry out qualifying works’, and provision is made for that landlord to invite, receive and consider observations on its proposed works. When paragraph 1(1)(a) of the Schedules to the Regulations required ‘the landlord’ to give notice to ‘each tenant’ it could only refer to the landlord who satisfied the description in regulation 1(1), i.e. the landlord who intended to do the work and whose intention was the reason the Regulations applied at all, and not some subordinate landlord who has no such intention.

The requirement in paragraph 1(1) of the Schedules to give a consultation notice to ‘each tenant’ meant every person who was a tenant (which also included a subtenant) of a dwelling and liable to contribute through a service charge to the relevant costs. To construe the requirement in that way did not involve giving an extended or unnatural meaning to the word ‘tenant’, but simply gave appropriate weight, in the context, to the word ‘each’.

The proper construction of the consultation requirements was therefore that a superior landlord intending to carry out works to enter into a qualifying long term agreement had to give notice to each of its direct tenants of a dwelling, and each of its own tenants’ subtenants of a dwelling who was liable to contribute towards the cost of the works. Thus, consultation was required with any intermediate tenant of premises which included a dwelling and with all subtenants of individual dwellings or of larger premises which included at least one dwelling.