Landlord and tenant – Notice – Service – Respondent landlord acquiring reversion to appellant tenant’s lease – Appellant’s address known to original landlord but not successor – Respondent serving notice requiring payment of ground rent to previous address – Appellant appealing against decision of First-tier Tribunal concerning liability to pay administration charges – Whether knowledge of address imputed to successor – Whether notice to be addressed to subject property – Appeal allowed
The appellant tenant held a long lease of 58 Trentham Court, Victoria Road, London W3. The respondents were respectively the appellant’s landlord and a management company responsible for providing services and the collection of service charges.
The lease reserved a ground rent payable to the landlord. The appellant also covenanted to pay service charges to the second respondent within 14 days of a written demand, failing which the first respondent became entitled to forfeit the lease for breach of covenant.
By clause 9, section 196 of the Law of Property Act 1925 was incorporated into the lease, which provided that a notice would be sufficiently served if it was left at the lessee’s last-known place of abode or business in the UK.
The appellant’s address given in the lease and at the Land Registry was 3 Newquay House, Black Prince Road, London SE1. After she purchased the lease of Trentham Court, the appellant continued to live at Newquay House until she moved to Hemans Street in 2010.
In September 2013, the first respondent acquired the reversion to the appellant’s lease. The second respondent sent demands for ground rent to Newquay House, the only address it had for the appellant. The respondents sought to recover administration charges of £420 for two letters written on its behalf in 2013. Those charges were only payable if the first respondent was entitled to take steps to forfeit the lease for non-payment of rent or other breaches when the letters before action were written.
It only had that right if it complied with section 166(1) of the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002, by giving the appellant the necessary notice requesting payment of the ground rent. The First-tier Tribunal (FTT) held that the charges were payable. The appellant appealed.
Held: The appeal was allowed.
(1) Each successive landlord should not be taken to possess knowledge of facts which were known to its predecessors, such as the address for service of leaseholders. As a matter of principle, no agency relationship existed between a buyer and a seller, whether the contract between them was for the sale and purchase of goods or real property. In the context of conveyancing, statute provided for a purchaser to be taken to have notice of certain matters, such as information within the knowledge of the purchaser’s agent (section 199(1)(ii)(b) of the 1925 Act) or the existence of rights registered in the Land Charges Register (section 198(1)). There was no similar provision requiring that the purchaser of an interest in land should be taken to know things about the property simply because they were known to the seller.
(2) As a general rule, unless there was a statutory requirement to the contrary, where a person wished to serve notice relating to a particular property on the owner of that property, and title to that property was registered at HM Land Registry, that person’s obligation to make reasonable inquiries went no further than to search the proprietorship register to ascertain the address of the registered proprietor. It was the responsibility of the registered proprietor to keep his address up to date. If the person serving the notice had actually been given a more recent address than that shown in the proprietorship register, then notice should be served at that address also: Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council v Tanna [2017] EGLR 17 followed.
In the present case, in the absence of any evidence that the respondents were aware that the appellant’s home address in 2013 was Hemans Street, the first respondent was entitled to rely both on the registered title and on the recital of the appellant’s address in the lease itself as justification for treating Newquay House as her last-known place of abode.
However, the general rule was qualified with the words “unless there is a statutory requirement to the contrary”.
(3) Section 166(5)(b) of the 2002 Act provided that a notice demanding the payment of ground rent might be sent by post but, if it was, section 166(6) required it to be addressed to the tenant at the dwelling unless he had notified the landlord in writing of a different address in England and Wales at which he wished to be given notices.
It was the landlord for the time being who was required to serve a demand for ground rent in accordance with section 166(1), and necessarily it was that landlord to whom the tenant’s notification of a preferred alternative address for receipt had to be given to be effective. Section 166(6) made the dwelling in respect of which the ground rent was payable the default address for service of a ground rent demand but allowed the tenant to make a positive choice to receive notices at a different address.
(4) For a notification to be sufficient to displace the default requirement to serve ground rent demands at the dwelling itself, it had to be notification of an address at which the tenant wished to be given notices under section 166. Section 196(3) of the 1925 Act provided an address for service of notices “required or authorised by this Act to be served”, ie, by a notice under section 146 of the 1925 Act. Unless a contrary intention appeared, its scope was extended by section 196(5) to “notices required to be served by any instrument affecting property”. A ground rent demand under section 166 was given neither under the 1925 Act nor under an instrument affecting property (the lease) but was a specific statutory notice with its own statutory service requirements.
Clause 9 of the lease was insufficient to amount to notification by the appellant of an address other than Trentham Court at which she wished to be sent ground rent demands. Section 166(1) of the 2002 Act had not been complied with. As the first respondent was unable to prove that notice was in fact given to the appellant, no ground rent was payable by her in 2013. Accordingly, the appellant was not in breach of covenant and there was no reason for the first respondent to take enforcement action against her. No administration charges were therefore payable.
The appellant appeared in person; Richard Granby (instructed by Scott Cohen Solicitors) appeared for the respondents.
Eileen O’Grady, barrister
Click here to read a transcript of Obi-Ezekpazu v Avon Ground Rents Ltd and another
