In an unusual case, the High Court has ruled that a will a man had written on two pieces of cardboard should be admitted to probate. The will, which the man had made the day before his tragic death by suicide, left his house and most of its contents to a...
The Upper Tribunal (UT) has upheld a decision to appoint a manager of a block of student flats under Section 24 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987.
The landlord of the block had let the flats to investment purchasers on long leases. A number of the leaseholders were dissatisfied with the landlord's management of the block and served a notice on him under Section 22 of the Act. Such a notice must state the grounds on which the First-tier Tribunal (FTT) will be asked to make an order to appoint a manager and the matters the tenant will rely on in order to establish those grounds.
Ruling on the leaseholders' application, the FTT noted that the allegations of poor management included failing to carry out adequate maintenance, which had resulted in water ingress and a rat infestation. Concluding that it was just and convenient to appoint a manager in all the circumstances, the FTT appointed the manager proposed by the tenants. However, the landlord was granted permission to appeal to the UT on three grounds.
The first ground was that the leaseholders' notice had not particularised the failures to repair and maintain the property. The UT observed that the notice clearly said that the matters relied upon included that the property was in disrepair and infested with rats. The failures had been set out in a different ground from the one to which they were relevant, but to ignore them for that reason would be obviously unfair. The FTT had not needed to deal with the point because the landlord had not argued before the FTT that the notice was defective in that way – he knew about the complaints and had not said that he had been given insufficient detail about them. In the UT's opinion, such an argument would have been unsuccessful in any event.
The second ground was that the notice had not given the landlord sufficient time to remedy the disrepair and the infestation: he had been given 14 days and the notice had been served just before the Christmas holiday period. However, he had asked for an extension and the leaseholders had not made their application to the FTT until seven weeks after the date of the notice. During that time, and for some months afterwards, he had done nothing. He could not therefore argue that the notice did not give him reasonable time.
The third ground was that the manager should not have been appointed because of potential conflicts of interest with his role as director of the letting agent used by the leaseholders. However, the FTT had clearly been aware of the suggestion that there might be a conflict of interest and had not thought there was one. The UT noted that no examples of possible conflicts of interest had been given before the FTT. The landlord's appeal was dismissed.