Court of Appeal decision on Right to Manage. Triplerose Ltd v 90 Broomfield Road RTM Co Ltd.
The case of Triplerose LTD v 90 Broomfield Road RTM Co Ltd is known as the case which refers to the Right to Manage of residential developments.
The Right to manage gives the right to leaseholders under the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002 to transfer the management responsibilities to a company which has been set up by them. For more information you can click here.
The above mentioned case dealt with the query whether leaseholders via the RTM company could acquire the management of more than one building in an estate as defined in Section 72 of the Act. The landlords didn’t agree with this and argued that they shouldn’t be able to obtain the right to manage of more than one building at a time.
In Triplerose Ltd v 90 Broomfield Road RTM Co Ltd, and Freehold Managers (Nominees) Ltd V Garner Court RTM Company Limited, the LVT sided in both of these cases with the Landlord, that the RTM could not acquire more than one building at a time.
The third case which was Proxima GR Properties LTD V Holybrook RTM Co Ltd the matter was transferred to the Upper Tribunal for them to consider. The Upper Tribunal sided with the RTM stating that the Right to Manage was specifically set up to enable leaseholders to manage their own building via a company set up by them. The 2002 act didn’t set a limit as to how many blocks they could acquire at a time and therefore didn’t see any reason why they should amend this.
However the conjoined cases than went to the Court of Appeal , who than turned this decision around by describing section 72 of the 2002 act as ‘singular building’ that can be acquired rather than multiple buildings. The decision was made due to the many problems that could arise with the term if RTM were to acquire multiple blocks at the same time, as issues could also arise to which part of the country this could include. It would be absurd to therefore include multiple developments around different parts of the country in one application.
It is therefore decided by the Court of Appeal that a Right to Manage Company can only acquire one building under the right to manage at a time.
Please contact Advance Block Management if you have any further questions.
