Most people have cars, and when renting property a parking space is an important consideration.
However often land reserved for parking could provide the land owner with a better return if it was built on. But can he do this if parking spaces are allocated to his tenants?
This also begs the question what actual rights do tenants have, when they are granted a parking space with their tenancy?
A recent High Court case, albeit (presumably) on long leases, looks at this. The report below is from the excellent Housing Law Bulletin provided by Garden Court Chambers.
Kettel & ors v Bloomfield Ltd [2012] EWHC (Ch)
25 May 2012
The claimants were the tenants of a block of flats. Their leases gave them the right to use designated parking spaces.
The landlords decided to build another block of flats on the site of those parking spaces and to offer alternative parking arrangements nearby.The claimants applied for an injunction to prevent the construction work.
The High Court rejected a claim that the parking places were part of the ‘demise’ under the leases but held that the tenants enjoyed easements over them. The landlords could not unilaterally destroy the subject of the easements.
An injunction was granted.
Comment
Technically I don’t see any reason why this should not apply to short leases too. The only problem being that most tenants may not have the funds to make an application to the court for an injunction.
However a well worded letter referring to this case may make the landlord more amenable to reaching a negotiated settlement.
Picture: car park
A useful point. Of course, with short leases it doesn’t take the landlord that long to terminate them under s 21 or whatever and then he can build what he likes. It does make things a bit more complicated (and expensive) for him too, so that would need to be factored in to any negotiations.
And a particularly well-drawn lease may allow a landlord to provide alternative parking facitilies, although I must admit I’ve never seen this in practice.
Sometimes it pays just to be a common man and apply common sense rather than a Judge.
Surely the Landlord – the sub-leaseholder I assume who owns the flat – also owns the parking space. If that is specified in the sub-lease then surely he must own it and no-one can just come along and build on it if they feel like it?
Otherwise you’d have chaos. If there was no control thorugh ownership then anyone could park anywhre – defeats the whole purpose of leases and cross covenants within them otherwise, surely?