Council house tenant–Notice to quit–Local authority not obliged to give reasons–Tenant cannot require authority to produce reasons to the court by pleading that he or she has been a good tenant and has not been in breach of any terms of the tenancy
This was an
appeal by Mrs Alma Kelly, tenant of a council house at Church Street, Rugeley,
Staffs, from a decision by Judge Allardice at Stafford County Court granting an
order for possession in favour of the landlords, Cannock Chase District Council,
following a notice to quit served on November 21 1975 terminating the tenancy
on December 28 1975.
Peter Baker QC
and Robert Orme (instructed by Wedlake Bell, agents for Pickering &
Pickering, of Rugeley) appeared for the tenant; Anthony Hidden QC and Robert
Smyth (instructed by B J Ranson (Solicitor to Cannock Chase District Council)
represented the local authority.
Giving
judgment, MEGAW LJ said that Mrs Kelly, because of sections 5(1) and 2(b) of
the Rent Act 1968, was not a protected or statutory tenant for the purposes of
the Rent Acts. Her solicitors had asked for particulars specifying the grounds
upon which the order for possession was sought, having regard to the
regulations and conditions of the tenancy. The local authority, although not obliged
to, answered that they based their claim on the termination of the tenant’s
former tenancy.
At the county
court hearing Mrs Kelly said that she had been a protected tenant in her
previous house, which had been compulsorily acquired and demolished. She was
rehoused at Church Street with her five children and received £25 a week social
security. There were no arrears of rent and the state of the property was very
good. There had been complaints about her by a neighbour and there was some
mention of a petition against her. She had been told to keep down the noise,
but it was nothing to do with her.
There had been
no complaints from the council since November 1975. The judge accepted that she
had acted as a good tenant and that there had been no breach of covenant, but
that was not enough to raise a prima facie case that the council had not
acted in good faith and had not taken into account all the relevant
considerations. For the tenant merely to have to say "I am a good
tenant" in order to retain possession was to bring in Rent Act principles
by the back door.
His Lordship
said that in his view there was nothing in law to suggest that a local
authority, serving a notice to quit on a tenant, had to give its reasons. It
was not a good defence for the tenant to state that she had been a good tenant
and had not broken the terms of the tenancy. Nor did the pleading of such a
defence require the authority to produce evidence of the considerations which
led to its decision.
If there were
some basis for a defence alleging, with proper particulars, bad faith on the
part of a council or its officers, that would be a different matter. There was
no reason why such a case should not be dealt with in the county court, if it
should arise.
LAWTON LJ and
SIR DAVID CAIRNS agreed in dismissing the appeal.
