News from the Courts - Rented Housing

Rented housing used to be a political football with the emphasis swinging from the landlord to the tenant and back again with every change in Government. Members who have been in the business for a long time will remember with a shudder the Rent Act 1977 where the emphasis was strongly pro tenant.

There are still tenancies subject to the 1977 Act and an interesting one came before the Courts recently in a case called Rugby School –v- Edwards. There the tenant had been a tenant of flat A since 1983 and so a protected tenant under the 1977 Act. In 1999 he fell into arrears and the landlord started court proceedings to get him out. In fact, that case was compromised and the tenant agreed to move out of flat A in return for the landlord writing off the arrears. At the same time the landlord agreed to let him a smaller flat B and a few days after he left flat A, he moved into flat B.

Surprise, surprise, the tenant could not pay the rent in flat B either and he was soon in arrears. This time, of course, he had an assured shorthold tenancy so the landlord went to Court to get him out in the usual way. But no, said the tenant, under the 1977 Act, if you move a tenant from one property which is protected by the Act to another property, the second property attracts the same protection. So, the tenancy of flat B was protected by the 1977 Act.

The judge did not agree. He made the point that the protection under the 1977 Act applies only where the tenant voluntarily surrenders his protected tenancy in return for a new tenancy of other premises of the landlord. But here the tenant was being forced to leave flat A because he had not paid his rent and it was only through the generosity (or naivete) of the landlord that he was granted the tenancy of flat B. He ceased to be a protected tenant when he gave up flat A and so he was an assured shorthold tenant of flat B.