Cases - Savva and another v Houssein

Record details

Name
Savva and another v Houssein
Date
[1996]; (1997)
Citation
2 EGLR 65; P&CR 150
Legislation
Keywords
Property management
Summary

In 1991 Mr and Mrs Savva granted a lease to Mr. Houssein to use a property as a café, a snack bar and a place for operating mini-cabs from.

Mr. Houssein covenanted not to display on the outside of the premises any sign or advertisement and not to make any alterations or additions to them without the prior consent of the landlords.

The tenant broke both covenants. The landlords sought to forfeit the lease. They served a section 146 notice asserting the breach of lease covenants and claiming they were incapable of remedy.

'When something has been done without consent, it is not possible to restore the matter wholly to the situation which it was in before the breach ... it is a remedy if the mischief caused by the breach can be removed. In the case of a covenant not to make alterations without consent or not to display signs without consent, if there is a breach of that, the mischief can be removed by removing the signs or restoring the property to the state it was in before the alterations ... all the breaches complained of in this case were capable of remedy. It follows that the notice under section 146 should have required them to be remedied.'

The judge ruled that the breach of the covenant was remediable if the harm caused could be rectified. The breach was a continuing one. Possession was denied. Aldous LJ could

‘see no reason why similar reasoning should not apply to some negative covenants’.