Assured tenancy – Determination of rent – Former long residential tenancy – Local Government and Housing Act 1989 – Housing Act 1988 – Long residential tenancy coming to an end – Claimant tenant becoming assured tenant by virtue of Schedule 10 to 1989 Act – Rent determined by rent assessment committee disregarding tenant’s improvements – Improvements not disregarded on subsequent reference under 1988 Act – Whether words to be read into statutory provisions so as to permit disregard of improvements – Claim dismissed
The claimant was the tenant of a flat in London that she had originally held from the defendant landlord on a long underlease at a rent of £195 pa. In 2003, the long residential tenancy came to an end and the claimant remained in possession under an assured periodic tenancy pursuant to section 186 of, and Schedule 10 to, the Local Government and Housing Act 1989. Schedule 10 replaced Part I of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, which had previously protected tenants such as the claimant until it was repealed by the 1989 Act.
A rent assessment committee determined the claimant’s rent at £1,668 per month, disregarding improvements that she had carried out during the long tenancy, as required by para 11 of Schedule 10. On a subsequent reference, however, a rent of £2,340 per month was determined. In reaching that figure, the rent assessment committee took the view that it should not disregard the claimant’s improvements by virtue of the wording of section 14(3)(b) of the 1988 Act; this provided that improvements not carried out during the claimant’s current tenancy could be disregarded only if “at all times during the period beginning when the improvement was carried out and ending on the date of service of the notice, the dwelling house has been let under an assured tenancy”. The committee considered that, since assured tenancies had not existed prior to their creation by the 1988 Act, that requirement could not be met. The effect of that decision was not only to increase the rent payable by the claimant but to deprive her of security of tenure because the new rent was over the £25,000 threshold above which the tenancy would cease to be an assured tenancy on an application of para 1 of Schedule 2 to the 1988 Act and Schedule 10 to the 1989 Act.
The claimant appealed. She contended that the removal of the protection that had previously existed under the 1954 Act was contrary to the statutory purpose of giving security to those whose long tenancies came to an end and that the court should construe the relevant provisions to give effect to that purpose.
Held: The claim was dismissed.
On the initial reference to a rent assessment committee, following the creation of an assured tenancy under Schedule 10 to the 1989 Act, the assessment was made pursuant to para 10(2) of Schedule 10 and para 11 applied to require the disregard of tenant’s improvements carried out during the course of the long residential tenancy. However, the tenant could not take advantage of that provision on any subsequent reference since this would be made under section 13(4) of the 1988 Act; therefore, section 14(3) of that Act would apply instead.
Since assured tenancies had not existed until the 1988 Act created them, section 14(3)(b) prima facie meant that tenants such as the claimant could not meet the condition for a disregard of improvements. They could succeed only if the 1989 Act, in conferring assured tenancies upon those whose long tenancies at a low rent had ended, provided for such tenants to benefit from the disregard. It did not. It applied only to enable a tenant, at the termination of the long tenancy, to take advantage of the security of tenure provided by the creation of an assured tenancy. It contained no provision by which the long tenancy was deemed to be an assured tenancy: see para 1(1) and 1(2) of Schedule 1 to the 1989 Act.
The court should decline to apply the unambiguous provisions of an Act, and should instead write in words to achieve the supposed purpose of those provisions, only in a clear case in order to prevent a provision from being unintelligible, absurd or totally unreasonable: Inco Europe Ltd v First Choice Distribution [2000] 1 WLR 586 applied. The 1989 Act was intended, by repealing the Rent Acts, to tip the balance in favour of landlords so as to try to encourage the letting of dwellings. The relevant provisions were intended to deal comprehensively with the security to be provided for those who had had the advantage of long tenancies at low rents. Amendments had been included to ensure that the assured tenancy, created following the termination of the long tenancy, contained such protections as were regarded as desirable; other protections could have been included but had not been. Consequently, the court could not find that the abolition of the previous protection provided for those whose long tenancies had come to an end was inadvertent. There was no justification for reading in the radical amendment that would be required to construe the provision in the claimant’s favour.
Dr Victoria Williams (instructed by David Tagg & Co) appeared for the appellant; Christopher Heather (instructed by Forsters LLP) appeared for the respondent.
Sally Dobson, barrister
