Right to manage – Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002 – Claim notice – Respondent RTM company serving claim notice on appellant landlord in respect of claim to acquire right to manage self-contained block of flats – Whether claim notice defective – Whether required to be signed by member or officer of RTM company rather than by solicitor with delegated authority to sign – Whether notice required to specify extent of any appurtenant property included within claim – Appeal dismissed
The respondent was an RTM company formed for the purpose of acquiring the right to manage a large, self-contained block of flats in London NW8 pursuant to Chapter 1 of Part 2 of the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002. Its claim to acquire that right was preceded by service of the requisite claim notice on the appellant landlord under section 79 of the Act. The appellant served a counternotice disputing the respondent’s entitlement to acquire the right to manage on the relevant date.
At a hearing of the claim before the leasehold valuation tribunal (LVT), the appellant contended that the claim notice was defective since: (i) it had not been signed by an authorised member or officer of the respondent company but had instead been signed on the respondent’s behalf by its solicitors; and (ii) it identified the premises to which the claim related only by reference to the postal address of the property, without specifying whether those premises did or did not include appurtenant property. On the signature point, it relied on the wording of the prescribed form of claim notice in Schedule 2 so far as it contained the words “signed by authority of the company” followed by the words “[signature of authorised member or officer]”. It contended the words in square brackets indicated a requirement that the claim notice was to be signed by a member or officer of the RTM company and by nobody else.
The LVT rejected those submissions and determined that the respondent was entitled to acquire the right to manage. It found that the signature of the solicitor on the claim notice was provided by an agent with the appropriate delegated authority from the board members of the respondent RTM company and that there was no requirement that appurtenant property be specified in the claim notice. The appellant appealed.
Held: The appeal was dismissed.
(1) The form of claim notice prescribed by para 8(2) and Schedule 2 of the 2010 Regulations was intended to initiate a legal process and to provide information to the recipient. The information to be communicated was of two sorts: part was common to all claim notices and consisted of material describing the process and indicating where information specific to the particular notice could be found, while the remainder of the required information was unique to each claim notice and had to be inserted into the printed form. The prescribed form also required that the claim notice be signed and dated. It required that the signature be preceded by the words “signed by authority of the company” because those words were part of the printed form. The information that the person whose signature appeared beneath those words had the authority of the company to sign the claim notice was thus part of the information that was to be communicated pursuant to section 80(9) and regulation 8. However, the words in square brackets that followed, “[Signature of authorised member or officer]” and “[Insert date]” were merely instructions to the person filling in the form; the draftsman of the 2010 Regulations has adopted the convention of placing an explanatory rubric in square brackets to indicate how those parts of the claim notice were to be completed. It was obvious, both from the use of square brackets and from their contents, that the description of the signature as being that of an authorised member or officer and the instruction to insert a date were not required to be communicated to the recipient. The effect of the prescribed form, so far as the signature was concerned, required the recipient of the claim notice to be told no more than that the document has been signed by authority of the company and the identity of the signatory was not one of the prescribed requirements of the form. Neither the 2002 Act nor the 2010 Regulations required that the recipient be informed that the signatory was an authorised member or officer. Since the form of claim notice did not require the recipient to be notified of the status or capacity of the signatory, it followed that the fact of signature by someone who was not within the category described in the bracketed rubric did not cause the completed claim notice to deviate from the prescribed form. The words in square brackets did not impose a limitation on who could sign; it was sufficient that the person signing “by authority of a company” did in fact have that authority: Assethold Ltd v 14 Stansfield Road RTM Co Ltd [2012] UKUT 262 (LC); [2012] PLSCS 205 applied; St Ermins Property Co Ltd v Tingay [2002] EWHC 1673 (Ch); [2002] 3 EGLR 53; [2002] 40 EG 174 distinguished.
(2) The extent of the appurtenant property did not have to be specified in the claim notice. Any appurtenant property was automatically within the claim. It was not necessary to impose a requirement to specify the appurtenant property in order to avoid falling foul of the provisions in section 73(4) and section 81(3) regarding duplication of claims in respect of the same premises. Appurtenant property did not have to pertain exclusively to the self-contained buildings that were the subject of a right-to-manage claim. Shared appurtenances were commonplace and the potential for more than one party to have management responsibility for such appurtenances was therefore part of the statutory scheme: Gala Unity v Ariadne Road RTM Co Ltd [2012] EWCA Civ 1372; [2012] 3 EGLR 79; [2012] 50 EG 105 applied. Management functions in relation to appurtenant property could be exercised simultaneously by an RTM company and by the landlord of the building and there was no reason why they could not also be exercised simultaneously by an RTM company and another RTM company that managed an adjacent building. In a scheme that extended to shared appurtenances, the fact that one RTM company was already exercising management functions over such property did not preclude another RTM company from doing the same. Sections 73(4) and 81(3) did not create or imply such a prohibition because they did not require that the specification of the premises over which the right to manage was claimed should include a description of any appurtenances enjoyed with the building.
The purpose of the notice, namely to identify the premises, was sufficiently achieved by identifying each self-contained building to which the claim related. Both the giver and the receivers of the notice would know the additional property, if any, that was appurtenant to that building because they were all either parties to the leases of the building, which conferred rights over the appurtenant property, or a tribunal appointed manager of the building. The identification of the building over which the right to manage was claimed was therefore a sufficient specification of the premises to satisfy the requirement of section 80(2). Consistently with that approach to the statutory scheme, the prescribed form of claim notice required only that the premises be named, and made no provision for any appurtenant property to be described or referred to by a plan or otherwise. Accordingly, the claim notice in the instant case was not defective. Although it was not possible to rule out the possibility of genuine disagreement or uncertainty over the extent of appurtenant property or other issues, nothing in the 2002 Act suggested that such disagreement was to be resolved in advance by requiring the claim notice to include a comprehensive statement of the appurtenant property over which the RTM company asserted an entitlement to exercise the right to manage.
The appeal was determined on the written representations of the parties.
Sally Dobson, barrister
