Members
Judith Jackson QC, Timothy Harry

Areas Of Practice
Real Estate

Facts
M was the leasehold owner of two properties - one a large house in Harley Street which had been converted into flats and the other, a mews house which adjoined the main house at the rear.   The mews house had its own entrance in Weymouth Mews.   M occupied one of the flats in the main house.   At ground floor level there was a door in the party wall between the two properties.   The party wall between the two properties did not lie in a vertically straight line and at basement level the basement of the main house undercut the ground floor of the mews house.

Held
The House of Lords rejected the test laid down in Tandon v Trustees of Spurgeons Homes (1982) AC 755 and overruled Duke of Westminster v Birrane (1995) QB 262

Comment
The complicated structure gave rise to several questions: (i) was each of the properties a "house" within s2 of the LRA 1967 so that M's claim was limited to the main house; (ii) were the two properties together "one" house for the purposes of s.2 of the LRA 1967 so that M could enfranchise both properties; (iii) were the two properties "vertically divided" within the meaning of s.2(1)(b) of the LRA act 1967 so that M's claim was limited to the main house; (iv) was the part of the basement of the main house which undercut the mews house, a "material part" within the meaning of s.2(2) of the LRA 1967 with the result that neither property could be enfranchised by M.

Report reproduced by kind permission from Lawtel