Business tenancies
Business tenancies
Dolgellau Golf Club v. Hett [1998] 34 EG 87
In this case the court was concerned with the question of whether the landlord had sufficiently made out his intention of running his own business of a golf club on the premises in question, which were already used by the tenant for the same purpose, under s. 30(1)(g) of the Landlord and Tenant Act [1954]. The judge in the county court had accepted the landlord's objection to the grant of a new tenancy on this basis, and this was upheld by the Court of Appeal. The case itself, and the facts underlying it are interesting and would repay reading in full, but to summarise: the tenant appealed against the decision in the court below primarily on the basis first, that the landlord was inadequately prepared in the sense that, for example, he appeared to have given little thought as to whether he would need to obtain any planning permissions for the erection of temporary buildings to accommodate his scheme, or as to the likelihood or otherwise of obtaining drink and other licenses for such temporary buildings if and when they were erected (the profits from the sale of alcohol and the operation of gaming machines being relevant to the issue of financial viability), and second, that the scheme was not obviously financially viable in any event.
The Court of Appeal seemed rather to share these reservations, but declined to over-rule the judge in the court below: there was no doubt of the genuineness of the landlord's intentions, and it was not for the court "to police a landlord's entitlement to recover possession of his own property by examining the financial wisdom of his . . . plans for it . . .".
Coppin v. Bruce-Smith [1998] EGCS 55
This case turned on a not dissimilar point, but from a rather different angle: in this case the landlord opposed the granting of a new lease on the ground of his intention to demolish or reconstruct the premises under s. 30(1)(f). The premises comprised a tennis club and the landlord hoped to redevelop the site at some time in the future,and had entered into a 150-year building lease with a developer, subject to the developer obtaining planning permission. The local planning authority objected to the proposal on the ground that this would entail a loss of local recreational facilities. The landlord therefore proposed initially simply to demolish the tennis club, so as to turn the land into a "brownfield site" sanssporting facilities, on the basis that the local planning authority would no longer have any proper ground for objecting to the proposed development, in effect turning his proposal into a two-stage process: first, demolition, then subsequent re-development. It was on the basis of the first stage, demolition,that he objected to the grant of a new lease. The court below had accepted the landlord's objection, but this decision was overturned on appeal. The Court of Appeal noted that the Planning Inspector (presumably on appeal) had turned down the original proposal on the ground stated: the loss of recreational facilities. The court was not satisfied that all the works of demolition proposed could lawfully be carried out without planning permission. The same objections would apply to any proposals for demolition and the court was not satisfied therefore that there was any reasonable prospect of the proposed works being carried out.
