What is a house?: Jewelcraft decides
The premises were a purpose built shop and flat, originally constructed in the 1920s with a kitchen on the ground floor at the back and an internal staircase connecting the ground and first floors. In 1970, the staircase was moved to the outside and the kitchen was moved upstairs, creating two self-contained units. In 2010, the tenant claimed the freehold under the LRA 1967. The landlords opposed the claim, saying the building was not a house. HHJ Dight agreed with the landlords. The CA overruled his decision. It held that it was reasonable to call a building comprising a shop with residential accommodation above a house, even if in ordinary speech it would best be described as a shop, and even if the residential accommodation is not linked internally to the remainder of the building. The Court said that it doubted whether the earlier Court of Appeal decision in Henley v Cohen was rightly decided; but if it was, it was distinguishable because residential use in Henley only started just before service of the notice of claim. The Court said that, in the future, neither the external appearance nor the internal layout of a building ought to matter in deciding if a building is a house if it is the sort of building which, as a matter of policy, Parliament intended to fall within the 1967 Act.Tony Radevsky appeared for the landlords and Stephen Jourdan QC appeared for the tenant.
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