Bluebird Boats, which runs the boating concession on the Serpentine in London’s Hyde Park doesn’t own the boathouse it built at the cost of around £500,000 in 2008. Instead, it is part of the land of the park, and therefore owned by the Queen, a High Court judge ruled this week.
The company has fallen into dispute with Royal Parks, the company that runs the Royal Parks on behalf of the Crown, now that its 15-year contract to operate boating on the lake has expired.
Bluebird won the tender to operate boating on the lake in 2004 on the condition that it invested more than half a million pounds to renovate the jetties and build a new boathouse. Now that Royal Parks is refusing to renew the contract, Bluebird is arguing that it should be able to dismantle the building to that it can be used elsewhere.
According to the ruling, by planning judge Mrs Justice O’Farrell, the issue is complicated by the fact that the construction licence granted to Bluebird to build the boathouse, “does not include any excess provision” about its ownership.
And there is no agreement about what the boathouse actually is.
Royal Parks claims the boathouse is made up of both the superstructure and the “substructure”, the specially-installed concrete slap on which it sits. Bluebird claims that the boathouse is just the superstructure, and not the slab.
The slab, experts agree, has “a high degree of permanence”.
Royal Parks also argues that the boathouse, as it defines it, has “become part of the land”. Lawyers for the claimants argue differently. They say it isn’t because its purpose was to support Bluebird’s business, not permanently enhance Hyde Park.
In her ruling the judge backed the park on both arguments.
She found that the slab was contracted specifically for the boathouse, and “there is no suggestion in any of the contemporaneous documents that the design of the slab was intended to accommodate a number of different superstructure buildings”.
Both elements, she found, “were built to be permanent and immobile”.
She also found that the purpose of the building was to enhance the park. Taken together, she found that it was a permanent enhancement and part of the land, which means it belongs to the Crown, not Bluebird.
“By reason of the extent of annexation of the building to the land, and the purpose of its design and construction as a permanent enhancement to the land, the boathouse has become part of the land and is owned by the Crown,” she said in conclusion.
The judge said she would hear applications for permission to appeal at a later date.
Royal Parks Limited v Bluebird Boats Limited
Business and Property Courts (Mrs Justice O’Farrell) 11 August 2021
