Housing Act 1988 – Dwelling-house – Houseboat – Claimant seeking possession of residential units occupied by defendants in harbour – Units comprising converted world war two landing craft raised on supports so no longer floating – Defendant claiming assured tenancies protected under 1988 Act — Whether defendants having tenancy of dwelling-house within meaning of Act – Whether units annexed to land – Judgment in favour of claimant
Each defendant lived in a world war two landing craft in a harbour in Bembridge, Isle of Wight. The crafts had been converted, by the addition of superstructures, into living accommodation. The defendants 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 unit; it offered leases of the plots, with car parking, to the respective occupiers. The defendants did not take up that offer. After notifying them, the harbour owner sold leases of their plots by auction, which the claimant purchased.
The claimant served the defendants with notices to quit, subsequently bringing proceedings for possession of their plots, plus damages and mesne profits. The proceedings against the third and fourth defendants were resolved by agreement. The other defendants resisted the claim on the ground that each held an assured tenancy protected under the Housing Act 1988. The claimant submitted that the defendants did not have a tenancy of a “dwelling-house” within the meaning of that Act.
On that issue, the court found that each unit 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 unit had at some point been raised to rest on timber supports so that it lay above the level of the highest tide; two of the three units remained unattached to their supports and could be lifted by crane, although the first defendant’s unit had recently been attached. Mains services were connected, although sewage was discharged directly into the harbour. The defendants occupied their units as their sole permanent residential accommodation and council tax was levied on each.
Held: Judgment was given in favour of the claimant.
The units were not “houses” within the normal usage of that term, but they were and remained boats although they had been adapted for residential use; they had not been annexed to the land so as to form part of it. Since the units remained chattels in the ownership of the defendants, they could not have been let as dwelling-houses and no assured tenancies could have arisen.
In determining whether something was fixed to the land so as to become part of the freehold, each case would turn on its own facts. It would be necessary to consider the degree of physical attachment and the possibility or otherwise of restoring the unit from its constituent parts after dissolution. Accession also required a degree of permanence, as opposed to some purely temporary provision, with permanence to be judged not merely by the number of years that a structure had stood but by an appraisal of the circumstances taken together. If a structure had been designed and constructed so that it could be taken down and rebuilt elsewhere, that might point to the possibility that it retained the character of a chattel: Elitestone Ltd v Morris [1997] 2 EGLR 115; [1997] 27 EG 116 applied.
In the instant case, the landing craft had originally been chattels, had been brought as such to their moorings and had remained such even after the superstructures had been added and the conversion to residential accommodation had been completed: Chelsea Yacht & Boat Co Ltd v Pope [2000] 2 EGLR 23; [2000] 22 EG 139 applied. As floating houseboats, they had remained chattels and they had not later become otherwise when they were raised onto the supports. It had been possible to raise them onto those supports by crane without damaging their integrity and without the need to take them apart and rebuild them; they could be removed in the same condition. That was a powerful indication that the units retained the nature of chattels, not essentially different in nature from mobile homes. The fact that none of the units had, until recently, been physically fixed to the supports was also consistent with it constituting a chattel that could be removed in one piece. The fact that this might not now be done without damaging the units, because the owners had allowed them to deteriorate, did not affect that conclusion; the process of decay did not result in such objects becoming affixed to the land. As to the purpose of annexation, the units had been raised on the supports so that they could be better enjoyed as chattels; it had not been intended that they should form part of the realty. In any event, it had not, until the laying out of plots in 2006, been possible to identify the land to which each unit might have been annexed. Although the parties’ intention was not relevant, the intention that could be derived from the degree and purpose of annexation was that the units should remain chattels. The subsequent affixation of the first defendant’s unit to the supports did not affect that conclusion and it constituted a trespass that the landowner could require to be remedied.
It followed that the claimant would be entitled to possession subject to the resolution of an issue regarding the validity of the notices to quit served on the defendants.
Thomas Jefferies (instructed by Daltons, of Petersfield) appeared for the claimant; Ethu Crorie (instructed by Abels Solicitors & Commissioners, of Southampton) appeared for the defendants.
Sally Dobson, barrister
