Right to buy — Agricultural college — Tenant a lecturer — Whether house within the “curtilage” — Meaning of curtilage
Mr Dyer is a senior lecturer in animal husbandry at the Kingston Maurwood College of Agriculture in Dorset. Since 1965 Mr Dyer has been the tenant of one of the lecturer’s houses on the estate. Mr Dyer wanted to buy his house under the right to buy legislation of the Housing Act 1980 as amended by the Housing and Building Control Act 1984. Mr Dyer’s right to buy was confirmed in the Weymouth County Court (His Honour Judge Best, May 27 1987). The county council, Mr Dyer’s employer and landlord, concerned at the loss of a house needed for lecturing staff and about the possible loss of other houses on the estate to other tenants, appealed from that decision.
Mr Dyer was a secure tenant with a right to buy since, by virtue of amendments introduced by the 1984 Act, that right was extended to tenants of county councils whose contracts of employment did not require them to occupy their houses for the better performance of their duties. The only real question of dispute was whether one of the exceptions to the right to buy set out in Part I of Schedule 1 to the 1980 Act (as amended by section 2 of the 1984 Act) applied. This depended on whether Mr Dyer’s house “forms part of, or is within the curtilage of … a building … held by the [county council] (a) … mainly for purposes other than housing purposes; and (b) consists mainly of accommodation other than housing accommodation”.
Held The county council’s appeal was dismissed. Mr Dyer’s house was not within the curtilage of a building and therefore the exception to the right to buy did not apply. Parliament has not defined the word “curtilage”. The Shorter Oxford Dictionary defines curtilage as “a small court, yard, or piece of ground attached to a dwelling-house and forming one enclosure with it”.
Curtilage seems always to involve some small and necessary extension to that to which it is attached. Had the words in the exception been “the curtilage of the college”, Mr Dyer’s house would have been within the curtilage, but Mr Dyer’s house could not be said to lie within the curtilage of another college building or collection of buildings. It stood some 450 yards from the main house in an isolated close of four houses. Mr Dyer was entitled to buy his house.
Jepson v Gribble
[1875-1883] 1 Tax Cases 78; and
Methuen-Campbell v Walters
[1979] QB 525 considered.
Roger Toulson QC and Mark Lomas (instructed by Moon Beever) appeared for the appellant county council; and John Lofthouse (instructed by Andrews Son & Huxtable, of Dorchester) appeared for the respondent.
