Morris, R (on the application of) v The London Rent Assessment Committee & Anor

A statutory notice addressed expressly and unambiguously to a former tenant is not given to the actual tenant merely because the latter receives it and recognises the mistake. The error must be assessed objectively and may prevent the notice from achieving its statutory purpose.

A rent assessment committee may determine an open-market rent exceeding the monetary limit for an assured tenancy. That limit does not cap the rent which may be proposed or determined. A determination above the limit instead causes the tenancy to cease qualifying for assured-tenancy protection.

The appellant occupied a Chelsea flat under a long lease which had been assigned to him shortly before its contractual expiry. The landlord had previously served a notice under section 4 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954, but addressed it to the original tenant rather than the tenant at the date of service.

The London Rent Assessment Committee concluded that the notice was invalid, treated the appellant as an assured tenant and determined an annual rent of £32,496. Hooper J dismissed an application for judicial review. The appellant challenged both the validity ruling and the Committee's power to determine a rent above the £25,000 qualifying limit for an assured tenancy.

1. Appeal dismissed unanimously. Mummery LJ delivered the leading judgment. Sir Murray Stuart-Smith and Brooke LJ agreed.
2. The 1995 notice was invalid. It was addressed expressly and unambiguously to a different person who had ceased to be the tenant many years earlier. This was not a minor error or slip. An objectively reasonable tenant receiving the notice would regard it as intended for the person named. The notice therefore could not be construed as having been given to the actual tenant and did not accomplish the statutory purpose of section 4 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954. Nor was it in the prescribed form, or substantially to like effect, for the purposes of regulation 4 of the Landlord and Tenant (Notices) Regulations 1957.
3. The Committee was entitled to decide whether the notice was valid. Although the tenancy's status concerned private-law rights ordinarily determined in the county court, validity went directly to the Committee's jurisdiction to determine the rent. The court declined to decide whether the Committee's ruling would create an issue estoppel or make later county court proceedings an abuse of process.
4. The 1999 notice and the Committee's rent determination were valid. Schedule 10 to the Local Government and Housing Act 1989 imposed no £25,000 ceiling on the annual rent which a landlord could propose or the Committee could determine. The Committee's task was to determine the proper open-market rent. If that rent exceeded the qualifying limit, the landlord could recover it, but the tenancy would cease to qualify for protection as an assured tenancy.
5. Brooke LJ added that the legislation disclosed no intention to preserve assured-tenancy protection for occupants of high-value properties by permanently pegging their rent below the qualifying limit.

1. Court of Appeal (Civil Division): The appeal was dismissed unanimously. The Court upheld both the ruling that the 1995 notice was invalid and the Committee's determination of a rent exceeding the assured-tenancy qualifying limit: [2002] EWCA Civ 276.
2. Administrative Court: Hooper J dismissed the appellant's application for judicial review on 4 May 2001. No citation for that decision is stated in the judgment.
3. London Rent Assessment Committee: The Committee decided on 8 June 2000 to determine the rent and, on 21 September 2000, fixed it at £2,708 per month.