Rent review — Appropriate date for purpose of section 12 of, and Schedule 2 to, Agricultural Holdings Act 1986 — Agreement to add small area to holding — Whether agreement operating to defer review for three years — Whether agreement was for adjustment of boundaries or variation of terms — Appeal allowed
The claimant and the defendants were respectively landlord and tenants under an annual tenancy of 256 acres of agricultural land (the holding) that had commenced on 29 September 1983. On 28 February 2000, the parties, in order to regularise an earlier agreement already acted upon, entered into a formal agreement (the 2000 agreement), whereby 1.3 acres of adjoining land (the additional land) were added to the holding with provision for a corresponding increase in rent.
In a dispute over rent review, the landlord, relying upon a notice served on 21 September 1998, contended that a rent review should take effect on 29 September 1999, this being the anniversary of the tenancy, and, accordingly, the “next termination date” for the purpose of section 12 of the Agricultural Holdings Act 1986. The tenant, relying upon para 4(1)(b) of Schedule 2 to the Act, claimed that no review could take place until three years after the 2000 agreement, since an increase in rent had taken effect on the date of that agreement. This led to an assertion by the landlord (the landlord’s argument) that para 4(1)(b) was disapplied by para 6, which operated where an agreement, not being one for a new contract of tenancy, was an agreement “for adjustment of the boundaries of the holding or for any other variation of the terms of the tenancy, exclusive of those relating to rent”. The landlord’s argument was rejected by the county court judge, and the landlord appealed.
Held: The appeal was allowed.
Applying the reasoning of the Court of Appeal in Mann v Gardner [1991] 1 EGLR 9, it would be straining the words of para 6 to describe an agreement as providing for “adjustment of boundaries” in a case where the boundary changes were the consequence of an agreed addition to, or subtraction from, the land in question. Accordingly, the appeal could not succeed on that basis.
However (and taking a point not raised in the court below), it was clear from para 6(a) that terms could be varied even where the purported variation would operate under the general law as a surrender and regrant. Furthermore, and notwithstanding the normal use of the word “terms”, it could be inferred from the reasoning in Mann, and the policy underlying paras 4 and 6, that a “variation of the terms” could include an agreed addition to, or subtraction from, the holding.
Caroline Hutton (instructed by Bircham Dyson Bell) appeared for the claimant; Anthony Tanney (instructed by Burges Salmon, of Bristol) appeared for the defendants.
Alan Cooklin, barrister
