Marks and Spencer Plc. (the tenant), who occupied four storeys of a London office block, invoked a break clause in the lease which had the effect of terminating the lease on January 24 2012. Prior to termination, the tenant had already paid a full quarter’s rent in respect of the period up to March 24 2012.

BNP Paribas (the landlord) refused to reimburse the rent paid by M&S in respect of the two-month period when it was not in occupation of the premises. That was on the basis that the break clause was only exercisable in circumstances where there were no arrears of rent. The lease was silent on what should happen in such circumstances and the landlord also argued that a settlement agreement reached between the parties on termination of the lease precluded the tenant’s claim for reimbursement.

Ruling in favour of theM&S, the High Court decided that it was just and equitable to imply into the lease a term requiring the landlord to repay an apportioned part of the quarter’s rent in respect of the two month period subsequent to termination of the lease. On a similar basis, the court also directed reimbursement to the tenant of overpaid car parking licence fees, insurance and service charges.

The EA’s decision to place substantial tracts of land adjoining the canal within Flood Zone 3 – denoting a 1% annual chance of flooding – had caused outrage amongst land owners. The local planning authority had proposed allocating land on Pomona Island, Trafford, for construction of 1,500 new homes but reduced that to 800 in the light of the EA’s stance.

Peel Holdings (Land and Property) Limited – the company behind the Pomona Island proposals and which owns more than 300 acres in the area -  and The Manchester Ship Canal Company Ltd, which is part of the same group, sought judicial review of the agency’s decision.

The EA argued that it had consistently followed its national policy of assessing flood risks on the basis that existing flood defences will fail and thus should be left out of account. However, the companies’ successfully argued at first instance that the canal’s sluices could not rationally be viewed as formal flood defences.

In dismissing the EA’ s appeal, the court noted that, since the canal’s completion in 1894, the sluices had never failed to drain a total catchment area of 3,000 square kilometres in the Manchester and Warrington areas which had previously been prone to flooding. The companies had relied upon evidence that the chance of the sluices failing in a 1% probability flood was less than 0.01%.

The court acknowledged that the sluices performed a vital role in preventing ‘over-topping’ of the canal’s banks during high floods. However, in classifying them as flood defences, the EA failed to follow its own published policy or to recognise that the sluices had an equally significant role in achieving the canal’s primary purpose.

The court concluded: “It makes no sense to describe the canal as a formal flood defence: it is designed and operates so as to permit sea-going ships to be navigated inland. The operation of the sluices is integral to the operation of the canal. The sluices and their associated locks enable the canal to achieve this purpose. It makes no more sense to describe the sluices as flood defences than the canal itself.

“The mere fact that the canal controls and regulates the flow of water cannot be a basis for placing either the canal or its associated structures within the category of formal flood defence. In short…either the whole of the canal and the structures by which it is operated are formal flood defences or none of them are”.

The Public Safety Charitable Trust (PSCT) often paid only £1 in rent annually in respect of offices and warehouses measuring thousands of square metres. The charity was in return paid substantial ‘reverse premiums’ by landlords so that both could jointly benefit from the 80% reduction in non-domestic rates granted to charities by section 43(6) of the Local Government Finance Act 1988 (LGFA).

However, the whole basis of PSCT’s novel operating method was undermined when the court ruled that the installation of small domestic broadband boxes in often very large commercial premises was insufficient to meet the requirement of the act that premises must be used ‘wholly or mainly for charitable purposes’ to qualify for relief from non-domestic rates.

The decision leaves the charity open to very substantial retrospective rates demands and was a significant victory for local authorities who viewed PSCT’s methods as a serious drain on the public purse. It also represented a blow to landlords for whom PSCT’s approach represented a convenient means of minimising rates liabilities on buildings left empty by the recession whilst benefitting a charity.

Magistrates had reached conflicting views on the correct interpretation of section 43(6). Resolving that issue in favour of local authorities, the court noted that PSCT’s broadband boxes – which are used to provide free internet access and to transmit messages to passers-by – only take up tiny proportions of the floor space of buildings in which they are installed.

The court noted the distinction between the concepts of ‘occupation’ within the LGFA, in particular in section 43(1), and ‘use’ within section 43(6). Rates were payable by those who are ‘in occupation of all or part of’ a hereditament and section 43(1) made it clear that persons can be liable for rates if they do not occupy the whole of a hereditament and leave part of it empty.

The court acknowledged that a building may fairly be described as being wholly or mainly used as an office even if it is not constantly crammed with desks and people working. However, it rejected PSCT’s plea that the installation and maintenance of the charity’s broadband transmitters should be viewed as ‘the entire or only relevant use’ of premises that were otherwise entirely empty.

The dispute arose due to an error by a property management company in paying the wrong utility company in respect of gas used to heat a swimming pool. The mistake was not uncovered for seven years and resulted in a charge of more than £100,000 being added to tenants’ service charges in a single year.

One of the tenants objected on the basis that, had the charge been spread over seven years, much of the cost would have fallen on a previous occupier of his flat. Citing section 20B, he argued that the cost of the gas supplies was unrecoverable from tenants in that it had been incurred more than 18 months prior to the date on which demand for payment from tenants was made.

The tenant’s arguments succeeded before the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal which held that the cost had been incurred on the date when the gas was supplied. However, that decision was subsequently reversed by the Upper Tribunal and that decision has now been upheld by the High Court.

The court recognised that the purpose of section 20B was to protect tenants against stale service charge demands issued without adequate notice. However, in dismissing the tenant’s appeal, the court ruled that the cost of the gas supplies was incurred either upon presentation of the invoice to the management company or upon payment of the same.

An enforcement notice had required restoration of a property to its original use as a single dwelling house and removal of all structures, fixtures and fittings associated with its unauthorised use as self-contained flats. The property contained three kitchens and a planning inspector subsequently ruled that one of them had to be removed in order to comply with the enforcement notice.

On appeal, the landlords of the property pointed out that its use as a dwelling house in multiple occupation was a permitted development and that the property already contained three kitchens prior to enforcement action being taken. The kitchens were not part and parcel of the breach of planning control and all that was required to ensure compliance with the notice was to remove the locks on the entry doors to each of the flats, it was submitted.

Allowing the landlords’ appeal, and remitting the matter for reconsideration by the inspector, the court emphasised that an enforcement notice may only require steps to be taken that are necessary for the purpose of remedying a breach of planning control. The inspector had failed to address the landlord’s plea that the kitchens were installed to facilitate the property’s lawful use as a dwelling house in multiple occupation rather than as a precursor to the house’s unlawful conversion into flats.

The woman had annoyed fellow residents by her constant shouting, banging, swearing and noisy rowing with her visiting boyfriend. At the behest of Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council, she was committed to prison for contempt of court after a county court judge found that she had defied the terms of an injunction which forbade her from inviting her boyfriend onto the premises and from causing nuisance, annoyance, harassment or distress to her neighbours.

In allowing her appeal, and reducing her sentence to five months, the court observed that the woman was a recovering heroin addict who had endured a ‘disadvantaged and tumultuous background’ and that her ‘volatile relationship’ with her boyfriend – who she used as an ‘emotional prop’ – lay at the root of her behaviour. The heavily pregnant woman was also starting to take steps to deal with her heroin and alcohol dependence.

Lord Justice Pitchford concluded: “It is clear from the terms of the judge’s decision that, in imposing a longer period of imprisonment, he was hoping to protect the appellant, and perhaps her unborn child, from herself. I have some sympathy with the judge’s approach but I have concluded that the deprivation of liberty is the most serious sanction available to the court and the appropriate period of custody is the lowest period which the seriousness of the breaches can properly justify.”

The property had a greetings card shop on its ground floor and its first floor had been converted for residential use by the long leaseholders without the landlord’s consent. Notwithstanding that breach of covenant, the tenants had sought enfranchisement soon after the unauthorised works were completed.

Dismissing the tenants’ appeal against a first instance decision to like effect, the court ruled that, in circumstances where the conversion of the flat had been carried out in breach of the landlord’s rights, the building could not be brought within the definition of ‘a house’ under section 2(1) of the act.

The court noted that there was a direct and close connection between the unlawful alterations to the building’s first floor and the statutory right which the tenants sought to enforce. Had the works not been carried out in breach of covenant, there could have been no argument that the act had any application to the case.

The court concluded: “No case has been made out for holding that benefit of the enfranchisement provisions of the 1967 act is available to a long leaseholder in such circumstances. As a matter of statutory construction it cannot have been intended by Parliament to give the lessee the right to enfranchise by making, in breach of covenant, the very adaptation of the building for living in that is necessary for him to exercise the right. The tenants seek to enforce a right acquired by committing a wrong. In general, the law should not and does not allow that”.

In July 2012 Buckinghamshire County Council granted planning consent for the plant on farmland adjoining a landfill site. The facility, which the council said was a central plank of its waste management strategy, will treat up to 300,000 tonnes of household and business waste annually and is intended to take all the waste generated by the county’s half-a-million residents. The site will be served by a new access route, running along a disused railway line from the A41.

In a double-pronged attack on the proposals, campaigners went to the High Court, complaining about the impact on wildlife habitats and claiming that the area is prone to flooding and that the plans posed a real risk of contaminating the area with poisonous dioxins. However, Mr Justice Lindblom dismissed both judicial review challenges, paying tribute to the care with which local planners dealt with the application.

In the first case, Christopher Prideaux argued that the council had failed to pay adequate regard to the impact on wildlife colonies along the old railway line, including three European protected species – pipistrelle and brown long-eared bats and great crested newts. There were four sites of special scientific interest within a kilometre of the railway line which is also home to 10% of the national population of the black hairstreak butterfly.

However, the judge said that it was not the court’s task to second-guess the council on ecological and habitat issues. Nature conservation concerns had been dealt with in depth in planning officers’ reports and, in response to objections, the access route had been redesigned to save as much scrubland habitat as possible.

The old railway line access was considered ‘essential’ to divert heavy vehicles away from local villages but alternative routes had been carefully considered in a detailed environmental impact assessment. The approach of planning officers’ had been ‘pragmatic and right’ and the council’s conclusions on ecological issues were in line with government policies and ‘perfectly rational’.

In the second case, Kenneth Kolb argued that the planning consent was unlawfully granted and that, as a result, hazardous waste containing toxic dioxins would be dispersed in an area prone to flooding. However, rejecting those arguments, the judge said that a detailed flood risk assessment had been carried out and the council had carefully followed government guidelines on the pollution issue. Arguments that the procedure followed was unfair were ‘untenable’ and the council had given clear and adequate reasons for its decision.

The tenant had succeeded to the tenancy of a 605-acre farm, complete with a farmhouse and agricultural buildings, by operation of section 53(7) Agricultural Holdings Act 1986. A dispute as to the reasonable rent payable for the holding was put to arbitration.

In his award, the arbitrator ruled under section 48(9) that £34,800 was the rent that might reasonably be expected to be paid by a prudent and willing tenant to a prudent and willing landlord. The arbitrator, among other things, accepted the tenant’s plea that building works carried out by his predecessor should be excluded from the rent assessment and the award was substantially lower than the landlord had contended for.

On appeal to the High Court, the landlord argued that the arbitration process had been infected by serious irregularities. It was submitted that the reasons given by the arbitrator in respect of a number of issues were so deficient that the landlord had suffered substantial prejudice. A direction was sought either overturning the award in its entirety or remitting the dispute, in whole or in part, to the arbitrator for reconsideration.

Having analysed the criticisms of the arbitrator’s decision, the court described his reasoning as ‘poor’ and ‘unimpressive’ and noted that the paucity of reasoning had placed a ‘considerable burden’ on the court. However, in dismissing the landlord’s appeal, the court ruled that the arbitrator’s reasoning was ‘just’ adequate to enable understanding and avoid substantial prejudice.

Arnold White Estates Limited (AWE) was in 2007 granted outline planning consent for large-scale housing development on its land-holding of about 20 acres on the southern edge of Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire. AWE soon afterwards contracted to sell the site to house-builders for more than £25 million.

But the sale of just over three-and-a-half acres of the site – at an agreed price of more than £5.3 million – was conditional on removal of an electricity line that had crossed it since the 1960s. At the time, AWE and local authority planners were confident that the line would be moved elsewhere to make way for development.

However, that proved a forlorn hope and, in June 2010, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change granted National Grid Electricity Transmission Plc. (NGET) a wayleave to keep the line in place for another 15 years. NGET must now pay the price for being granted that right after the UT ordered it to pay AWE £5,829,476 compensation for the loss of the land’s development potential.

The tribunal agreed with AWE that its loss as a result of the cable’s continued presence should be calculated on the basis of the index-linked sale price that had been agreed in 2007. NGET’s plea that that took no account of the drop in land values in intervening years was rejected. The tribunal accepted that the land would be incapable of development until the wayleave expired and ruled that, ‘in the real world’, the strip of land affected by the cable was only worth a nominal £1.