Civil way: 24 March 2017

It’s all very well for a tenant to engage in litigation with their landlord but they could be clobbered for some or all of the landlord’s costs thanks to a lease covenant. The tenant may apply under s 20C of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 for an order restricting the landlord from adding costs to the service charge. The tenant could be off the hook for their service charge percentage of the whole or part of the costs. In fact, all tenants could escape liability and an individual tenant might even apply under s 20C to be relieved of bearing their proportion of costs incurred in litigation between landlord and a co-tenant.

The tenant in the recent Bretby Hall Management Co Ltd v Pratt [2017] UKUT 0070 (LC)—gloriously involving 90 disputed items including window cleaning and gardening—applied for a s 20C order to the upper tribunal (lands chamber) which had allowed