Tenancy agreement — Joint tenants — Periodic tenancy — Notice to quit given by one tenant without authority of other — Whether tenancy thereby brought to an end — Whether statutory trust for sale altering the position of one tenant acting unilaterally — Whether periodic tenancy considered retrospectively as single term affecting principle that continuation beyond the end of term depending on the will of all parties — Court of Appeal deciding that notice by one joint tenant effective between lessor and lessees to terminate tenancy — Appeal by tenant dismissed
The appellant, M, and his co-habitee, Mrs P, were granted a weekly tenancy of a flat at 35 Niton Street, London SW6, by the respondent local authority. The tenancy was terminable by four-weeks’ notice. M and Mrs P fell out and Mrs P left the flat. She consulted the local authority, which agreed to rehouse her if she would terminate the tenancy of the flat by giving an appropriate notice, which she did. The notice was given without M’s knowledge or consent but the local authority immediately notified him that the tenancy had been determined. In proceedings to recover possession, at first instance the judge held that Mrs P’s notice to quit was ineffective, but the Court of Appeal made an order for possession: see [1991] EGLR 263. The appeal court reached its decision on the basis of the decision in Greenwich London Borough Council v McGrady (1982) 267 EG 515, whereby a notice to quit given by one of several joint lessees under a periodic tenancy was held to bring the tenancy to an end. The tenant appealed to the House of Lords.
Held The appeal was dismissed.
1. The application of first principles would suggest the answer to the question at issue although the legislature had intervened in many categories of tenancy — agricultural, residential and commercial — to confer upon tenants extra-contractual rights entitling them to continue occupation without the landlord’s consent. It was in relation to joint tenancies in those categories that the question arose whether or not notice to quit by one of the joint tenants could determine the tenancy — particularly where the effect of the determination would be to deprive the other joint tenant of statutory protection. But the statutory consequences were not of relevance; the issue was whether at common law a contractual periodic tenancy granted to two joint tenants was incapable of termination unless notice to quit was served with the concurrence of all of them. The answer could be no different in the contextual relationship of landlord and tenant than in any other contractual context. In any ordinary agreement for an initial term which was to continue for successive terms unless determined by notice, the obvious inference was that the agreement should continue beyond the initial terms only if, and so long as, all parties to the agreement were willing that it should do so. To hold that A could not determine the contract without the concurrence of B, where both contracted with C on terms for one year and thereafter from year to year unless determined by notice, would presuppose that A and B had assumed a potentially irrevocable contractual obligation for the duration of their joint lives. The application of ordinary contractual principles would lead to the expectation that a periodic tenancy granted to two or more joint tenants would be terminable at common law by an appropriate notice to quit given by any one of them whether or not the others were prepared to concur.
2. A review of the authorities showed that there was no principle of the law of real property and peculiar to the contractual relationship of landlord and tenant which refuted that expectation: see, inter alia, Doe d Aslin v Summersett (1830) 1 B & Ad 135, and Greenwich London Borough Council v McGrady (supra).
3. Further, the fact that the law retrospectively regarded a tenancy from year to year which had continued for a number of years as a single term in no way affected the principle that continuation beyond the end of each year depended on the will of the parties that it should continue no further than the parties had already impliedly agreed upon by their omission to serve notice to quit.
4. Notwithstanding the enactment of the Law of Property Act 1925, in cases where the joint tenants of a periodic tenancy held both the legal and the beneficial interest in a legal estate in land in a trust for sale, the existence of that trust made no difference to the principles applicable to the termination of the tenancy. If before 1925 the implied consent of both joint tenants signified by the omission to give notice to quit was necessary to extend the tenancy from one period to the next, precisely the same applied since 1925 to the extension by the joint trustee beneficiaries of the periodic tenancy which was the subject of the trust.
5. Their lordships thus agreed with the Court of Appeal that, unless the terms of the tenancy agreement provided otherwise, notice to quit given by one joint tenant without the concurrence of any other joint tenant was effective to determine a periodic tenancy.
Robert Reid QC and Paul Staddon (instructed by Oliver O Fisher & Co) appeared for the appellant tenant; and Stephen Sedley QC and Beverly-Ann Rogers (instructed by the Director of Legal Services, Hammersmith & Fulham London Borough Council) appeared for the respondent local authority.