Royal Brompton & Harefield Hospitals Charity v Roupell & Anor

Teaching-hospital endowments vested in a Board of Governors under the National Health Service Act 1946 were not thereby held on trust for the Crown. Crown immunity therefore did not exclude Rent Act protection merely because the Board managed the hospital on behalf of the Minister.

A later transfer of trust property to a special health authority under the National Health Service Reorganisation Act 1973 did not alter that conclusion. Alternatively, long-standing treatment of occupiers as protected tenants may support an estoppel preventing the landlord from resiling from that position where the occupiers relied on it to their detriment. If section 38 of the Housing Act 1988 converts historic tenancies into assured tenancies, section 19A does not retrospectively make them assured shorthold tenancies.

The claimant, a charitable successor landlord, sought possession of two residential properties occupied by the defendants under historic leases. The defendants had been treated for decades as regulated tenants under the Rent Acts.

The claimant argued that the properties had acquired Crown immunity through the nationalisation and reorganisation of the National Health Service, and that the tenancies became assured shorthold tenancies when the claimant became independent in 2015. The defendants disputed Crown immunity and relied alternatively on estoppel. The central issues were whether the properties had been held on trust for the Crown, whether the claimant was estopped from denying Rent Act protection, and, if not, what tenancy status followed under the Housing Act 1988.

1. Crown immunity under the 1946 Act. The properties formed part of the endowments of a teaching hospital. Section 6 of the National Health Service Act 1946 transferred hospital premises to the Minister, but expressly excluded section 7 endowments. Section 7 instead vested teaching-hospital endowments in the Board of Governors, free of existing trusts, to be held on trust for purposes relating to hospital services or the Board’s statutory functions. That was inconsistent with a trust for the Crown.
2. The Board’s separate function of managing and controlling the hospital on behalf of the Minister under section 12 did not convert its trust-holding function into one exercised for the Crown under section 13. Ministerial appointment of Board members and statutory control did not make the Board publicly owned or its property Crown property. The claimant’s primary case therefore failed.
3. The 1973 reorganisation. The National Health Service Reorganisation Act 1973 reorganised NHS bodies but contained no provision impressing teaching-hospital trust property with a Crown trust. Section 27 continued the charitable trust structure. The 1982 order merely identified the body to which the property was to be transferred; it did not transfer the property to the Secretary of State or place it in the general NHS asset pool. The secondary case also failed.
4. The properties consequently remained subject to Rent Act protection and the defendants were regulated tenants. No ground under section 98 of the Rent Act 1977 was established.
5. Alternatively, applying Daejan Properties Ltd v Mahoney (1995) 28 HLR 498, the claimant would have been estopped from denying that it had treated the defendants as protected tenants. Each defendant had relied on that treatment over many years in organising accommodation, finances and property expenditure, and would suffer detriment if possession were ordered.
6. Further alternatively, section 38 of the Housing Act 1988 could make the historic tenancies assured tenancies when Crown immunity ceased, but section 19A applied by reference to when an assured tenancy was entered into after 28 February 1997. It did not apply merely because an earlier tenancy became an assured tenancy in 2015. The claims were dismissed.