Rights to collective enfranchisement are under scrutiny in the Court of Appeal in a case that could have implications for thousands of enfranchisement claims each year.
Raymere Ltd, landlord of a Bournemouth apartment block, is challenging a Bournemouth County Court ruling that three initial enfranchisement notices served by its tenants, on 6 August 2001, under section 13 of the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993, were valid.
Raymere responded to the notices with a section 20 notice requesting evidence of each tenant’s title to the lease within 21 days. However, by the deadline, it had received merely office copy entries for the qualifying flats as subsisting in the register on 12 June 2001.
In the Court of Appeal, Anthony Radevsky, counsel for the landlord, argued that section 20(1) required a nominee purchaser to prove that each of the participants was a qualifying tenant on the date that the section 13 notice was given. He claimed that, in the circumstances, the section 13 notices would be “deemed withdrawn” under section 20(3), which meant that a further notice could not be served for 12 months.
He added that the “question raised in this case was an important one that had arisen on many occasions in practice and that affected many collective enfranchisement claims, of which there are thousands annually”.
Seeking to uphold the validity of the section 13 notices, Gabriel Fadipe, counsel for the tenants, maintained that the tenant had not been asked “to deduce title beyond reasonable doubt, nor even on the balance of probabilities”. He said: “Any reasonable landlord would assume, upon receipt of an office copy, whether up-to-date or historic, that the tenant was forwarding the same to show that he had become and remained the owner of the flat.”
The hearing continues.
Raymere Ltd v Belle Vue Gardens Ltd Court of Appeal (Brooke and Jonathan Parker LJJ and Holman J) 2 July 2003.
Anthony Radevsky (instructed by Derek T Wilkinson & Co, of Bournemouth) appeared for the appellant; Gabriel Fadipe (instructed by Preston & Redman, of Bournemouth) appeared for the respondent.
References: PLS News 3/7/03
