All round the houses

The Court of Appeal has ruled on the meaning of the word “house”.

It does not mean a purpose-built block of flats—including seven flats and three small shops over an area of 20,000 square feet—opposite London’s Sloane Square station, the Lords Justices ruled in Magnohard v Earl Cadogan and Cadogan Estates [2012] EWCA Civ 594.

The case hinged on whether the building identified in a lease was a “house” for the purposes of s 2(1) of the Leasehold Reform Act 1967.

At trial, Judge Marshall QC held it was not, basing her decision on the character of the building. If it seemed “odd” to call the building a house, then it was not a “house” as far as
s 2(1) was concerned, she said.

On appeal, the three Lords Justices unanimously upheld Marshall J’s decision. 

Giving judgment, Lord Justice Lewison said the word “house” is “one of the 200 most frequently used words in the English language, and one of the 20 most frequently used nouns”.

“The clear consensus of judicial opinion is that a purpose-built block of flats cannot reasonably be called ‘a house’,” he said.

“It is true that some judges have referred to tower blocks and others to large purpose-built blocks, but in my judgment the underlying principle is clear. It is also true that none of these observations is binding ratio, but such is the strength and consistency of the consensus that it would in my judgment be wrong for us to depart from it.”

In his judgment, Lord Neuberger, Master of the Rolls, said: “Unless there is binding authority to the contrary, it appears to me that, simply as a matter of ordinary language, such premises cannot ‘reasonably [be] called’ a ‘house’…A building constructed, laid out and used as a block of substantial self-contained flats throughout its 120 years of existence cannot reasonably be called a house—at least in the absence of very unusual factors.”

He said the Supreme Court is due to decide a similar case, Hosebay [2010] 1 WLR 2317, in 10 weeks’ time.