Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council v Tanna

Where a local planning authority serves a property-related notice on a registered proprietor, its obligation to make reasonable inquiries will generally be satisfied by searching the proprietorship register for the proprietor’s address for service. The proprietor bears responsibility for keeping that address current. A more recent address actually given to the serving authority should also be used.

Failure to reproduce exactly the statutory wording for deemed service does not necessarily invalidate a notice. The court must determine whether Parliament intended total invalidity as the consequence of the particular non-compliance. A notice fixed to known unoccupied land and addressed only to the owner remained effective against that owner, despite omitting the prescribed reference to occupiers.

The local planning authority served a notice under section 215(1) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 concerning a derelict property. It delivered one copy to the registered proprietor’s address in the proprietorship register and affixed another to the unoccupied property. The latter was addressed to the owner rather than to “the owners and any occupiers”.

Mr Recorder Klein in the Central London County Court held that service was invalid. He concluded that the authority should have searched other council departments for contact information and that the notice affixed to the land failed to reproduce the wording required by section 329(3).

The authority appealed. The central issues were the extent of the reasonable inquiries required to identify a proprietor’s last known address and whether the omission of any reference to occupiers invalidated service on the owner.

1. Appeal allowed. The notice was validly served. Lewison LJ gave the judgment, with which Arden LJ agreed.

2. As a general rule, where a person wishes to serve a property-related notice on an owner and title is registered, the obligation to make reasonable inquiries goes no further than searching the proprietorship register for the registered proprietor’s address. The relevant knowledge was that of the local planning authority, rather than every department of the council. The authority was not required to trawl through other departmental records or obtain a postal address through an email address held elsewhere in the council.

   The address appearing in the public register is an address for service. The registered proprietor is responsible for keeping it current. If the person serving the notice has actually been given a more recent address as the intended recipient’s address or place of abode, notice should also be served there. The reasoning in London Borough of Newham v Ahmed [2016] EWHC 679 (Admin) and Newham LBC v Miah [2016] EWHC 1043 (Admin) was accepted and reinforced by the land registration rules.

3. The omission of the prescribed words “and any occupiers” from the notice affixed to the property did not invalidate service on the owner. Statutory non-compliance does not conclude the inquiry. The court must ask whether Parliament can fairly be taken to have intended total invalidity as the consequence of the particular departure from the statutory requirements.

4. Parliament does not intend an absurd or futile result. The property was known to be unoccupied, so requiring the notice to address non-existent occupiers would serve no useful purpose and would give the registered proprietor only an adventitious defence. Parliament could not have intended the omission to invalidate service on the owner to whom the notice was addressed. Had occupiers existed, however, a notice addressed only to the owner would not have served them validly.

1. Court of Appeal (Civil Division): The authority’s appeal was allowed. The notice was held to have been validly served.

2. Central London County Court: Mr Recorder Klein held that the authority had not validly served the notice, because it had not made sufficient inquiries into the proprietor’s current address and had not used the complete wording prescribed for deemed service.