Prudential Assurance Co Ltd v London Residuary Body

Prudential Assurance Co Ltd v London Residuary Body
Court	House of Lords
Decided	16 July 1992
Citation(s)	[1991] UKHL 10, [1992] 2 AC 386
Keywords
Lease

Prudential Assurance Co Ltd v London Residuary Body [1991] UKHL 10 is an English land law case, concerning leases.

Facts

Mr Nathan owned 263-265 Walworth Rd, Southwark, London before 1930, and the London City Council the road. It planned to widen it, encroaching on a strip of land separating his shop from the road. The LCC bought the freehold of the strip, but agreed he could use it until the project went ahead, and he would pay £30 a year in rent ‘until the strip of land is needed for road-widening’. But by 1988 the road had not been widened and the London Residuary Body, successor of the LCC held it. Prudential Assurance Ltd now held the strip and LRB wished to end Prudential’s right to use the strip. Valuers put the strip at £10,000 a year. Prudential argued it could not get possession because there was no road widening yet.

Millett J found in favour of Prudential. LRB used the leapfrog procedure to go directly to the House of Lords, as it wished to challenge the Court of Appeal cases, In re Midland Railway Co’s Agreement and Ashburn Anstalt v Arnold.

Judgment

Lord Templeman held the tenancy was too uncertain to be effective, and thus had not created a binding lease. Lord Browne-Wilkinson noted that any successor in title for Mr Nathan would not have land that faced onto the road. Nothing could be more unsatisfactory.^[1]

“

The bizarre outcome results from the application of an ancient and technical rule of law which requires the maximum duration of a term of years to be ascertainable from the outset. No one has produced any satisfactory rationale for the genesis of this rule. No one has been able to point to any useful purpose that it serves at the present day. If, by overruling the existing authorities, this House were able to change the law for the future only I would have urged your Lordships to do so.

”

Sources on leases

LRA 2002 s 116 and Sch 3, para 1

Protection from Eviction Act 1977 s 5

Family Law Act 1996 ss 30-33

LPA 1925 ss 1 and 205(1)(xvii)

Errington v Errington [1951] EWCA Civ 2

Ashburn Anstalt v Arnold [1988] EWCA Civ 14

Street v Mountford [1985] UKHL 4

Mikeover v Brady [1989] EWCA Civ 1

Aslan v Murphy and Duke v Wynne [1989] EWCA Civ 2

AG Securities v Vaughan [1988] UKHL 8

Prudential Ltd v London Residuary Body [1991] UKHL 10

Bruton v London & Quadrant Housing Trust [1999] UKHL 26

ECHR art 8 and Prot 1, art 1

Kay v Lambeth LBC [2006] UKHL 10

see English land law, licenses and leases

Notes

↑ [1992] 2 AC 386, 396-7

References

External links

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