Haysport Properties Ltd, R (on the application of) v Rent Officer Of West Sussex Registration Area

For the purposes of an early rent review under section 67(3) of the Rent Act 1977, a change in the condition of a dwelling house includes a substantial change caused by repairs. This remains so where the landlord was under a repairing obligation or complied with a housing authority’s repair notice. The statutory reference to improvements is inclusive. Its definition does not exclude repairs from the wider expression change in condition. The two-year restriction is an administrative safeguard against repetitive applications, not a basis for preserving a rent that has ceased to be fair. The applicant must still show that the change made the registered rent no longer fair.

Haysport Properties Limited sought judicial review of a rent officer’s refusal to entertain a fresh application for registration of a fair rent. The premises were a regulated tenancy under the Rent Act 1977. A rent assessment committee had reduced the registered rent because substantial disrepair rendered about half the rooms uninhabitable. After repairs were completed, the landlord applied for a new registration within two years of the committee’s determination.

The rent officer considered that the statutory condition for an early review had not been met. The High Court dismissed the application. The central issue on appeal was whether repairs changing a dwelling house from unfit to fit for human habitation could constitute a change in its condition under section 67(3)(a).

1. Appeal allowed. The High Court’s order was set aside. A mandamus was granted in the terms sought, with costs below and in the Court of Appeal.

2. “A change in the condition of the dwelling house” in section 67(3)(a) of the Rent Act 1977 bears its ordinary meaning. It includes a change produced by repairs to the fabric of the dwelling. The fact that the works were required by a repairing obligation or by a notice under section 189(1) of the Housing Act 1985 does not take them outside the subsection.

3. The parenthetical words “including the making of any improvement therein” enlarge rather than restrict the expression “change in condition”. The definition of improvement in section 75, which excludes decoration and repair, qualifies the word improvement only. It does not qualify the wider statutory phrase or exclude repairs from it.

4. Section 70 requires the state of repair to be considered when fixing a fair rent. The existence of a landlord’s repairing covenant must also be taken into account, but a property in disrepair may command a lower fair rent than the same property in repair, even where the covenant exists. A later substantial repair may therefore make the registered rent no longer fair.

5. The two-year limit is an administrative restriction designed to prevent repetitive applications where circumstances remain unchanged. It does not prevent an early review where an unforeseen change has falsified the basis of the earlier determination. Trivial works will not suffice, because the change must also have made the registered rent no longer fair.

6. If the rent officer proceeded on the basis that repairs could never constitute a change in condition, he erred in law. If he accepted that they constituted such a change but concluded that conversion from unfitness to fitness could not affect fairness, that conclusion was perverse.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): allowed the appeal, granted mandamus, and awarded costs here and below.
• High Court, Queen’s Bench Division: Mr Jack Beatson QC dismissed the judicial review application and refused permission to appeal.
• Rent assessment committee: reduced the registered fair rent from £3,224 to £1,820 per annum following consideration of substantial disrepair.