Occupants of mobile home — Agreement with park owner — Right to assign — Approval of park owner not to be unreasonably withheld — Whether occupants entitled to damages on ground of unreasonable refusal to give consent to assignment — High Court holding no such right existed — Law relating to landlord and tenant not applicable to mobile home owners — Court of Appeal upholding decision — Appeal dismissed
The case concerned a mobile home at 9 Marshmoor Crescent, Hatfield, Hertfordshire. In December 1988, the appellants, L and Miss N, entered into an agreement with the former site owners under the Mobile Homes Act 1983. The respondents, Berkeley Leisure, had then acquired the interest of the former owners of the site. In 1989, L sought to assign the benefit of their agreement and the home to a third party, but Berkeley Leisure had not consented without requesting certain alterations. The purchasers looked elsewhere and the £46,000 sale was lost. In a subsequent action Berkeley Leisure had sought to terminate the agreement on the grounds that it was no longer L’s main residence and that L had failed to pay his pitch fees.
L and Miss N counterclaimed for damages on the grounds of Berkeley’s unreasonable refusal to give consent in 1989 to the assignment of their mobile home to the third party purchasers; together with the benefit of their agreement with the park owners, as governed by the terms of the Mobile Homes Act 1983. That agreement between the park owners and the occupants contained a term implied by clause 8(1) of Schedule 1, Part 1 of the 1983 Act that the occupants should be entitled to sell the mobile home and to assign the agreement to a person approved by the park owners whose approval should not be unreasonably withheld. At first instance it was held that as a matter of law, L and Miss N had no cause of action against the park owners in damages. For the purposes of argument on the question of law underlying the counterclaim it was assumed that Berkeley had in fact refused agreement to assign and that the refusal had been unreasonable and L suffered damage as a result. L appealed.
Held The appeal was dismissed.
1. A covenant on the part of the tenant not to assign without consent, such consent not to be unreasonably withheld, did not amount to a positive covenant on the part of the landlord not to withhold his consent arbitrarily, which would give rise to an action for damages against him.
2. The position at common law was fundamentally altered by section 4 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1988 which introduced a cause of action for a breach of statutory duty where a landlord had broken any duty imposed upon him. Section 1 imposed a qualified duty to give consent. Under section 2 there was a duty to pass on applications and under section 3 there was a qualified duty to approve consent by another.
3. The common law rule applied to agreements of the kind contained in the present case in the same way as it applied to tenancies before the 1988 Act.
4. In the absence of a positive covenant or undertaking by the owner that he would not unreasonably withhold his consent, the only remedy for the occupier was to assign if he was absolutely certain of his right to do so or to start an action in the county court for a declaration to that effect.
5. The general law of landlord and tenant was not applicable to the relationship between a site owner and the owner of a mobile home, who had the right to place his home on a particular piece of land owned by the owner under the terms of an agreement between them.
The appellant appeared in person, Miss N did not appear and was not represented; Guy Adams (instructed by Porter Bartlett & Mayo, of Yeovil) appeared for the park owners.
