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Conventional wisdoms

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30 October 2014 / Mark Sefton
Issue: 7628 / Categories: Features , Property
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Mark Sefton discusses enfranchisement

The English are deeply sentimental about property ownership. That is one reason why the two enfranchisement Acts, the Leasehold Reform Act 1967 and the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 have so often been litigated. And so it continues. There have been two recent decisions, one overturning a conventional wisdom; the other reaffirming one. Both deserve attention.

Mount Eden v Bolsover

One is Mount Eden Land Ltd v Bolsover Investments Ltd (20 June 2014, unreported). The tenant had a long lease of an office block in central London. As with so many office buildings now, it was worth more as flats than as offices. So the tenant proposed to convert. The landlord’s consent was required. It could not be unreasonably withheld. The landlord refused it. It said that, if the offices were turned into flats, and if the flats were sold off on long leases, then there might be a collective enfranchisement. It could therefore lose its freehold if it consented.

Norfolk & Bickel

The conventional wisdom was that

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