The Supreme Court has dismissed a claim that the rule to the effect that service of a valid notice to quit by only one joint tenant is enough to terminate a joint secure tenancy is a breach of human rights.
Lord Neuberger, Lady Hale, Lord Clarke, Lord Wilson, Lord Carnwath, Lord Toulson, and Lord Hodge unanimously rejected an appeal by Michael Sims – a husband who wishes to stay in the family home in Chipperfield, Kings Langley, Hertfordshire, after his wife left the property with her children – in which he claimed that the rule set down by the House of Lords in Hammersmith and Fulham Metropolitan Borough Council v Monk infringed his rights under Article 8 and Article 1 of the First Protocol (A1P1) to the European Convention on Human Rights.
Following Mrs Sims’ service of a notice to quit in June 2010, Mr Sims has been left without security of tenure and with no interest in the three-bedroom property, giving Dacorum borough council an unqualified right to possession. He faces eviction, but sought to prevent that fate.
However, giving the court’s ruling dismissing the appeal, Lord Neuberger said that what had happened to Mr Sims was the “result of a bargain that he himself made”, and that he could not now claim that his human rights had been breached.
He said: “The property which Mr Sims owned and of which he complains to have been wrongly deprived, whether one characterises it as the tenancy or an interest in the tenancy, was acquired by him on terms that (i) it would be lost if a notice to quit was served by Mrs Sims (clause 100), and (ii) if that occurred, Dacorum could decide to permit him to stay in the house or find other accommodation for him (clause 101). The property was lost as a result of Mrs Sims serving a notice to quit, and Dacorum did consider whether to let Mr Sims remain, as he requested, and decided not to let him do so.
“Given that Mr Sims was deprived of his property in circumstances, and in a way, which was specifically provided for in the agreement which created it, his A1P1 claim is plainly very hard to sustain. The point was well put in the written case of Mr Chamberlain QC on behalf of the Secretary of State: ‘the loss of [Mr Sims’s] property right is the result of a bargain that he himself made’.”
It had been argued on Mr Sims’ behalf that the service of the notice to quit by Mrs Sims was itself a violation of his article 8 rights because it put in jeopardy his right to remain in his home.
But Lord Neuberger said: “The fact that the service of the notice to quit put Mr Sims’s right to stay in his home at risk does not mean that it therefore operated as an infringement of his right to respect for his home. No judgment of the Strasbourg court begins to justify such a proposition. Mrs Sims had the right to serve the notice, and, as already observed, the service of such a notice and its consequences were specifically covered by the agreement which gave Mr Sims the right to occupy the house as his home in the first place (see clauses 100 and 101).
“I accept that the effect of the service of the notice to quit was to put at risk Mr Sims’s enjoyment of his home. However, I do not consider that that undermines the point that full respect for Mr Sims’s article 8 rights was accorded by the facts that (i) his tenancy was determined in accordance with its contractual terms to which he had agreed in clause 100 of the tenancy agreement, (ii) he was entitled to the benefit of clause 101 of his tenancy agreement, (iii) under the Protection from Eviction Act 1977, he could not be evicted without a court order, and (iv) the court would have to be satisfied that Dacorum was entitled to evict him as a matter of domestic law, and (v) the court could not make such an order without permitting him to raise a claim that it would be disproportionate to evict him.
Sims v Dacorum Borough Council, Supreme Court (Lord Neuberger, Lady Hale, Lord Clarke, Lord Wilson, Lord Carnwath, Lord Toulson, and Lord Hodge) 12 November 2014
Andrew Arden QC, Toby Vanhegan, Justin Bates and Amy Knight (instructed by ARKrights Solicitors) for the appellant
Ranjit Bhose QC, Andrew Lane and Dean M Underwood (instructed by Dacorum Borough Council Legal Department) for the respondent
Martin Chamberlain QC and Oliver Jones (instructed by Treasury Solicitors) for the intervener
