| LANDLORD AND TENANT — Leasehold enfranchisement — Tenants’ right to acquire reversion — Validity of notice — Landlord’s counter-notice asserting tenants’ notice did not comply with statutory requirements — Tenants serving fresh notice — Whether failure to comply with statutory provisions barred service of fresh notice — Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993, s 13
Poets Chase Freehold Co Ltd v Sinclair Gardens Investments (Kensington) Ltd [2007] EWHC 1776 (Ch)
Ch D: Morgan J: 26 July 2007
A notice that was purportedly given under s 13 of the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993, but was subsequently accepted by the qualifying tenants to have failed to comply with the requirements of s 13(3), was an invalid notice that did not have statutory consequences and there was nothing in Chapter 1 of Part 1 of the Act to bar the tenants from serving without delay a valid s 13 notice.
Morgan J so held in the Chancery Division when dismissing an appeal by the defendant landlord, Sinclair Garden Investments (Kensington) Ltd, from a decision of Judge Collins, sitting in the Central London County Court, by which he held that a notice served under s 13 of the 1993 Act did not comply with s 13(3)(d) of the 1993 Act, was therefore invalid and thus did not preclude the tenants, acting by the claimant Sinclair Gardens Investments (Kensington) Ltd as nominee purchaser, from serving a further notice that did comply with s 13.
On 19 December 2005 the tenants of 8 flats served on the defendant a notice purportedly given under s 13 of the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993. The defendant served a purported counter-notice on the tenants asserting that the s 13 notice did not comply with the requirements of s 13(3) of the 1993 Act. On 20 April 2006, accepting that the first s 13 notice was invalid, the tenants served a further notice under s 13. The defendant then served a counter-notice contending that the service of the first s 13 notice meant that the tenants were not able to serve the second s 13 notice. The claimant issued proceedings under s 22 of the 1993 Act seeking declaratory relief.
MORGAN J said that there was nothing in the scheme of Chap 1 of Pt 1of the 1993 Act that required the conclusion, contrary to the normal position with non-compliant notices, that a purported notice under s 13, which failed to be effective because it did not comply with s 13, none the less had some statutory consequences such that it was to be treated as a notice “under s 13" or a “notice in accordance with s 13" or as a “notice which continues in force” until the tenants accepted that the notice did not comply with s 13 and was ineffective. The prohibition on a subsequent notice in s 13(8) did not apply and the invalid notice did not have to be withdrawn under s 28. Accordingly the tenants were entitled to serve a valid s 13 notice.
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