Arthur Phillips & Anor v Tess Garraway

For purposes of the Housing Act 1988, rent has the established meaning given under the Rent Acts. Goods or services count only where the parties have attributed a monetary value to them. It is insufficient that a court could value the consideration. A tenancy under which the only consideration is unquantified services is therefore one under which no rent is payable and falls outside the assured-tenancy regime in paragraph 3 of Schedule 1. The result follows from the statutory language, legislative context, the operation of the Act’s rent provisions, and Parliament’s contemporaneous decision to protect money’s-worth tenancies under the Protection from Eviction Act 1977 without giving them assured-tenancy status.

Arthur and Janet Phillips let The Lodge to Tess Garraway under a rolling tenancy requiring at least two days’ estate work each week, without assigning that work any monetary value. After notices to terminate and quit, the landlords sought possession on the basis that the tenancy was a common-law tenancy outside the Housing Act 1988. District Judge Chambers granted possession on 12 January 2024. Her Honour Judge Venn dismissed the tenant’s appeal on 8 January 2025.

On second appeal, the tenant argued that her services were rent because a court could determine their value. She also sought to rely on payments for council tax and utilities. The central issue was whether the tenancy was one under which no rent was payable under paragraph 3 of Schedule 1, or an assured tenancy requiring statutory grounds or compliance with section 21.

1. Disposition. Lord Justice Males gave the leading judgment. Lady Justice Falk and Lord Justice Moylan agreed. The appeal was dismissed.
2. Statutory construction. The meaning of rent had to be determined from the statutory language, context, purpose and historical setting. The court applied the contextual approach in R (Quintavalle) v Secretary of State for Health [2003] UKHL 13 and R (O) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] UKSC 3. The Barras principle, derived from Barras v Aberdeen Steam Trawling and Fishing Co Ltd [1933] AC 402, supported giving a statutory term its established judicial meaning where Parliament had reused it in a similar context, subject always to legislative intention.
3. Meaning of rent. Parliament intended rent in the Housing Act 1988 to have the meaning established under the Rent Acts. That meaning included money and goods or services whose value the parties had agreed in monetary terms. It did not include unquantified services merely because a court might be able to value them. The reasoning in Hornsby v Maynard [1925] 1 KB 514, Montagu v Browning [1954] 1 WLR 1039, Barnes v Barratt [1970] 2 QB 657 and Bostock v Bryant (1990) 22 HLR 449 established that conclusion.
4. Application. The tenancy required services but contained no agreed monetary valuation or mechanism for quantifying them. It was therefore a tenancy under which no rent was payable for paragraph 3 of Schedule 1 purposes and could not be an assured tenancy. The landlords consequently did not need to rely on Schedule 2 grounds or section 21.
5. Additional payments. Schedule 1 paragraph 2(2) excludes sums expressed as payable for council tax, services and similar items unless the parties could not have regarded them as such. The issue had not been litigated below, there was no relevant finding, and permission to advance it was refused.

• Court of Appeal (Civil Division): On second appeal, the tenant’s appeal was dismissed on 9 February 2026.
• Hastings County Court, Her Honour Judge Venn: The tenant’s appeal from the possession order was dismissed on 8 January 2025.
• Hastings County Court, District Judge Chambers: Possession was ordered on 12 January 2024.