The High Court has rejected an unusual claim to a tenancy involving a fairground ride.
Dorinda Holland had claimed she had a tenancy of two plots in St Giles, Oxford, for four days a year, during the city’s annual St Giles Fair each September, which entitles her to use the land for a lucrative fairground ride known as the Cyclone.
She sought to recover almost £70,000 in lost profits from Oxford City Council, claiming that, in 2013, 2014 and 2015, she was denied full use of her land, in breach of covenant, preventing the operation of the Cyclone.
However, now Master Bowles has rejected her case, and ruled she only ever had the benefit of a licence, not an annual periodic tenancy.
He said: “In the result, I am satisfied that Mrs Holland has no continuing legal rights, as against the council, in respect of either site 129, or site 130, and that her status on those sites has never been any more than that of a licensee, occupying under a licence granted to her each year.
“She has no legal entitlement, year on year, to the allocation, by the council, in her favour, of either site 129, or site 130.”
He added that the true source of the “permanency” she had enjoyed as occupant of those two sites lies not in any legal rights against the council, but in the fact that she has had Showmen’s Guild rights over the two sites, binding on other showmen. He said that the council’s policy of allocating sites takes account of those Guild rights.
Holland v Oxford City Council High Court (Master Bowles) 17 October 2016
Mark Warwick QC (instructed by Gordon Dadds) for the claimant
Nicholas Grundy QC (instructed by Head of Law and Governance) for the defendant
