Housing Act 1988 – Dwelling-house – Houseboat – Respondent seeking possession of residential units occupied by appellants in harbour – Units comprising converted world war two landing craft raised on supports so no longer floating – Appellants claiming assured tenancies protected under 1988 Act – Appellants held not to have tenancy of dwelling-house within meaning of Act – Whether units annexed to land – Appeal dismissed
Each appellant lived in a “houseboat”, made from a converted world war two landing craft, in a harbour in Bembridge, Isle of Wight. The appellants paid various harbour dues and mooring fees to the harbour’s owner. In 2005, the latter granted a long lease of the entire harbour to a company that divided it into plots corresponding to each houseboat; it offered leases of the plots, with car parking, to the respective occupiers. The appellants did not take up that offer. After notifying them, the harbour owner sold leases of their plots by auction, which the respondent purchased.
The respondent served the appellants with notices to quit, subsequently bringing proceedings for possession of their plots, together with damages and mesne profits. The appellants resisted the claim on the ground that each held an assured tenancy protected under the Housing Act 1988. The respondent submitted that the defendants did not have a tenancy of a “dwelling-house” within the meaning of that Act.
The judge found that each houseboat had been purchased from its previous owner in the early 1990s under an agreement for the sale and purchase of a chattel. Although originally designed to float, each had, at some point, been raised to rest on timber supports so that it lay above the level of the highest tide. Mains services were connected, although sewage was discharged directly into the harbour. The appellants occupied their houseboats as their sole permanent residential accommodation and council tax was levied on each.
Ruling in favour of the respondent, the judge held that the appellants held only licences, not tenancies and that, even if there were tenancies, they were not of a dwelling-house since the houseboats remained chattels, not annexed to the land, notwithstanding their conversion for residential use: see [2011] PLSCS 106. The appellants appealed.
Held: The appeal was dismissed.
Any tenancy that the appellants held was of the plots that accommodated the wooden supports on which the houseboats rested. Such a tenancy could not be of a “dwelling-house” unless the houseboats had become part of the land comprised in the tenancies. That had not happened. The houseboats had remained chattels that the tenants could remove, albeit with difficulty, at the end of the lease.
Annexation so as to become part of the realty was a question of both intention and degree. The degree of physical annexation was not conclusive as to whether the chattel had become annexed to the land but had to be considered in conjunction with the purposes of the annexation in the particular case. The placement of the houseboats on the wooden supports did not give them a sufficient degree of permanence to make them part of the plots on which those supports stood. Although constructed to accommodate the houseboats, the supports belonged to the harbour owner and merely provided a facility that the owners of the houseboats could use for a fee. The houseboats placed on those supports had undoubtedly been chattels when their owners originally purchased them, and they had been sold on separately from any assignment of the tenancy. If they had become part of the realty, and therefore the tenancy, on being placed on the platforms, their owners would have ceased to be entitled to remove or sell them in the way they had. Moreover, the houseboats fell within a category of items that were designed to be moveable. Irrespective of their condition, they were structures that could have been moved without being dismantled or destroyed in the process.
Taking into account all the background facts regarding the ownership of the harbour, the construction and regulation of moorings and the course of dealing between the successive harbour owners and the appellants, the overwhelming inference was that the licences of tenancies of the plots did not extend to the houseboats but continued to be limited to the plots and timber supports. The arrangements by which the harbour owner provided facilities for the location of the houseboats at a rent had not been converted into leases of dwelling-houses. The appellants were not assured tenants.
Philip Glen (instructed by Abels Solicitors & Commissioners, of Southampton) appeared for the appellants; Thomas Jefferies (instructed by Daltons, of Petersfield) appeared for the respondent.
Sally Dobson, barrister
