Supreme Court refuses to hear appeal over key “intention to redevelop” date

The Supreme Court has declined to entertain a tenant’s claim that a landlord opposing the grant of a new tenancy must establish an intention to redevelop at the date of service of a section 25 notice, rather than the subsequent date of trial. Earlier this year, McCombe LJ at the Court of Appeal upheld a ruling by Judge Ellis in the Croydon County Court, by which he dismissed tenant Richard Hough’s application for a new tenancy of business premises known as Units 2 and 3, Railway Buildings, Station Road, South Norwood, London, SE25, and ordered Hough to give up possession by 4pm on 29 August 2014. The order for possession was stayed until the outcome of the appeal, but now Lords Neuberger, Wilson and Carnwath have brought the case to an end by refusing Hough permission to appeal. They found that the application “does not raise an arguable point of law”. Judge Ellis declared that landlord Greathall had the intention to demolish and reconstruct the property on the termination of the tenancy within the meaning of section 30(1)(f) of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 and held that the relevant date for ascertainment of Greathall’s intention, for the purposes of section 30(1)(f), was the date of the hearing before him. Hough argued that the relevant date was not the date of the hearing but the date of service by Greathall of its notice determining the contractual term of the current tenancy under section 25 of the Act. That date was 19 June 2013, and the judge had found that, at that date, Greathall did not have the requisite intention. Hough claimed that the traditional position had been altered in 2004, when the wording of section 25 of the Act was amended by the Regulatory Reform (Business Tenancies) (England and Wales) Order 2003 However, dismissing the appeal, McCombe LJ found that there was nothing in the new language that requires the landlord to have in place at the date of the notice all the elements that will enable him to prove that his intention is to redevelop. Hough v Greathall Ltd Supreme Court (Lords Neuberger, Wilson and Carnwath)