Most houses are built in such a way that they cannot be removed from the land on which they stand, unless they are demolished. In such circumstances, it has long been established that the house in question will have become part of the land itself: Elitestone Ltd v Morris [1997] 2 EGLR 115. By contrast, a house that is constructed so that it can be removed, whether as a unit, or in sections, may remain a chattel, even though it is connected temporarily to mains services such as water and electricity.
Spielplatz Ltd v Pearson [2015] EWCA Civ 804; [2015] PLSCS 239 concerned a chalet in a naturist community in St Albans. The occupants bought the chalet from the previous occupiers and entered into an annual tenancy with the owner of the resort, before spending £100,000 on improvements. The landowners took the view that the tenants were changing a wooden dwelling into a larger and more permanent brick/block structure and, following some unfriendly correspondence with the tenants, sent them a six-month notice to quit.
The tenants claimed that the chalet formed part of the land and that they had an assured tenancy of both, even though neither of the parties had realised that this was the effect of their agreement when the lease was granted. The trial judge accepted that the parties had intended that the tenants would actually own the chalet, but ruled that it had acceded to, and formed part of, the land.
The Court of Appeal has upheld the decision. The court reminded the parties that the answer to the question whether the chalet formed part of the land depended on the degree to which, and object for which, it had been annexed to the land. It is the purpose that the object is serving that is important, and not the purpose of the person who put it there. Was the object brought onto the land for the use or enjoyment of the land, or for the more complete or convenient use or enjoyment of the thing itself?
If a structure can only be enjoyed in situ, and is such that it cannot be removed in whole, or in sections, to another site, there is a strong inference that the structure was placed on the land to form part of the realty. The original chalet had been built in such a way that it could not be removed, except by destruction. Therefore, it did form part of the realty and the subjective intentions of the parties did not affect the issue of whether it had, in law, become part of the land. Furthermore, the fact that the tenancy agreement described the demised premises as a “plot or clearing” did not compel the court to conclude that the chalet did not form part and parcel of the land.
Consequently, the tenancy was one under which a dwelling-house had been let as a separate dwelling for the purposes of section 1 of the Housing Act 1988. This meant that the landowners had unwittingly created an assured tenancy, with all the implications that this entailed and were liable to comply with the repairing obligations imposed on landlords by section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985.
Allyson Colby is a property law consultant
