Rent review — Trigger notice — Second notice containing typographical error — Whether notice valid — Whether landlord entitled to rent arrears — Tenants’ appeal dismissed
The appellants are tenants under a 20-year lease, granted in 1973 by a predecessor in title of the respondent company, of premises at Elvet Bridge, Durham City; the term was stated to have commenced on November 1 1972. The lease provides for a rent review at the expiration of the sixth and 13th years to the open market rental value at each review date. The open market rental was to be specified in writing by the landlord not less than three months before each review date and was deemed to be the rent unless there was a reference to a dispute procedure within a time-limit.
Following the first review, the rent was increased to £1,750. On May 23 1984 the respondents’ solicitors sent a letter that purported to be a notice to review the rent “as from 1st November next”; a rent of £8,750 was specified. That letter was not sent to a party other than the tenants. The solicitors sent another letter the following day to the appellants; the rent was specified in figures as “£8,850” and in text as “eight thousand seven hundred and fifty pounds”; no date was specified as the date from which the rent was to take effect. In June 1984 the appellants made an offer, subject to contract, that they were prepared to pay a rent of £4,000. No further steps were taken by either party until the landlord commenced proceedings to recover the rent of £8,750 as from November 1 1985.
In the Newcastle upon Tyne County Court (January 29 1988), His Honour Judge Hall allowed the respondents’ claim. The appellant tenants appealed, contending that: (1) on the construction of the lease, the review date should have been November 1 1986 rather than November 1 1985; and (2) neither letter was a proper notice of review. Accordingly the rent review had not been implemented and the arrears of rent were not due.
Held The appeal was dismissed.
The second notice contained a typographical error, but the test of its validity was not whether the two figures differed by the small amount of £100 but whether the tenants were misled. A notice must communicate the requisite information. It must do this in a manner which is sufficiently clear to bring home its purport to a reasonable tenant. The present tenants were businessmen and were not misled.
Nunes v Davies Laing & Dick Ltd
[1986] 1 EGLR 106 applied.
John Fryer Spedding (instructed by Watson Burton Cooper & Jackson, of Newcastle upon Tyne) appeared for the appellants; and Rodney Ferm (instructed by J P Hall & Co, of Spennymoor) appeared for the respondents.
