The Court of Appeal’s judgment in a dispute over service charges at a Cornwall chalet park will now be handed down on Hallowe’en.
Though the ruling had initially been announced as taking place on Tuesday, it has now been moved to Friday 31 October.
The case is considered likely to have far-reaching consequences on landlords, managing agents and lessees of residential premises in respect of the calculation of “qualifying works” under Section 20 of the Landlord & Tenant Act 1985.
The owners of the park, Martin and Rebekah Francis, are seeking to overturn a high court ruling that they were not entitled to recover £95,000 as their wages for managing the site.
Judge Cotter at Truro Crown Court had initially allowed the wages to be paid, but in December, the chancellor of the high court allowed an appeal by the tenants of the 25–acre holiday site Point Curlew at St Merryn, Cornwall.
The chancellor also found that Judge Cotter had failed to apply the 1985 Act properly when calculating the cost of qualifying works for the 2009 service charge.
He sent the case back to the crown court for a recalculation of the qualifying works, but now the park owners hope the Court of Appeal will reinstate the initial decision.
Point Curlew was created in the 1970s on part of a disused WWII airbase.
Phillips and ors v Francis and anr
