As more and more portable accommodation becomes available, which can be assembled – as opposed to being constructed – on site, legal questions are bound to arise. Caddick v Whitsand Bay Holiday Park Ltd [2015] UKUT 63 (LC); [2015] PLSCS 55 concerned an application under section 27 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, which enables a tribunal to decide whether a service charge is payable and in what sum.
In order to establish that a tribunal can consider such an application, an applicant must show that the accommodation constitutes a “dwelling” which is defined as a “building or part of a building”: section 38.
The unit of accommodation at the centre of the dispute was a timber-framed holiday lodge on a plot of land in a holiday park. The tenants had taken a 125 year lease of the plot in order to station their own holiday lodge there and, although they covenanted to keep a lodge on the plot throughout the term, they had the right to remove it when the lease ended.
The lodge itself comprised two sections, which had been connected together and were attached to the ground by chain anchors, but which could be dismantled and removed from the site by crane, or on tow. The tenants’ argument that the lodge was a “building” was based on definitions in the New Oxford Dictionary of English (a “structure with a roof and walls, such as a house”) and the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (“that which is built, a structure, edifice”). They suggested that it was perfectly possible for a structure that started life as a mobile home to become a building if its wheels and tow bar were removed – as was the case here.
The tenants’ application was dismissed because a tribunal had already decided, in proceedings for the recognition of an association formed by the tenants of the holiday park, that the lodges fell outside the ambit of section 38. However, had it been necessary to consider the issue afresh, the judge indicated that he too would have dismissed the application because the lodge was not a “building” for the purposes of that section.
In Elitestone Ltd v Morris [1997] 2 EGLR 115, the House of Lords decided that a wooden bungalow, which was not physically attached to its base, but which could not be dismantled and re-erected elsewhere, had become part of the land. By contrast, the lodge in this case was not attached to the land in any way that made it a fixture, or part of the realty. It was a mobile home, which could be dismantled and re-assembled elsewhere, without being destroyed in the process, and the lease of the plot actually required the tenants “to maintain its mobility”. Therefore, the lodge was not a “building” and, as a result, was not a “dwelling”.
We know, from the litigation in Phillips v Francis [2010] 2 EGLR 31 that the provisions of section 18-30 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 can, and do, apply to holiday homes. However, this case indicates that some holiday park tenants may be unable to take advantage of the legislation because their dwellings are not “buildings”.
Allyson Colby, property law consultant