The Gazette 1972

Landlord and Tenant Amendment Act, 1971

This Act which was passed on the 1st December 1971 deals with four unconnected topics, two of which relate to the law of rent restrictions. The first matter dealt with by the Act is an attempt to remedy the unsatisfactory position in which sports clubs found themselves where they could not qualify tor reversionary leases under the provisions of the 1958 Act because the lands which they held were too exten- S1 ve or were not subsidiary and ancillary to the buil- dings on the land. The new provisions will enable a club^ which either holds its land, called "qualifying •and", for the purpose of sport under a lease for twenty- one years or longer or has been in continuous occupation o r possession for that purpose for not less than twenty- one years and has spent (other than on maintenance) sums of at least fifteen times the yearly rent, with a minimum of £1,000.00, on permanent buildings or structures or on developing the land for sport, to obtain a "sporting lease". Note that if the qualifying land ceases to be primarily used for the purpose of carrying °n the sport in respect of which the lease was originally granted, the landlord may terminate the lease. In addi- tion where a sports club holds other land other than that on which the buildings have been built or the development carried out on which there are no buil- dings but which are used in conjunction with qualifying *and for the same purpose as the qualifying land the club can obtain a sporting lease of the additional land so long as it is not more than a quarter of the total area °f the qualifying land and the other land. The provi- sions of the 1958 Act apply generally to sporting leases. If the terms of the lease have to be fixed by the Court J t will contain rent review clauses to operate at the expiration of the first twenty-four years of the term of ninety-nine years and further reviews at twenty-five year intervals. The second matter dealt with by the Act is the prob- e m created by certain leases which fell outside the terms of the 1958 Act in particular on the Proby Estate in County Dublin. It is known that considerable difficulty w a s being experienced in drafting any legislation which w ould cover the case of the Proby lessees, who were generally considered to be worthy of protection, but which would not open the flood gates to numerous other tenants whose claims were not so just. The solution adopted in the Act is first to repeal and re-enact with amendments Section 10 of the 1958 Act. This provided that where a new lease or a renewal of a lease which wpitld have been a building or proprietary lease if the ty58 Act had been in force was granted to the person e ntitled to the lessee's interest under the old lease the J^newed lease was to be deemed to be a building lease, this provision did not cover the Proby Estate cases because the renewed or new leases were not granted to e persons entitled to the lessee's interest under the old

lease. Section 10 has therefore been amended so that it provides now under Section 8 of the 1971 Act that where the renewal or new lease was granted either to a person entitled to the lessee's interest under the old lease as heretofore or at a rent less than the rateable valuation of the property at the date of the granting of the new lease then the new lease will be deemed to be a building lease. As some of the Proby leases had in fact expired prior to the passing of the Act a further section provides that where this had happened within eight years before the passing of the Act and subject to certain other require- ments the lessees are given a period of twelve months following the passing of the Act to claim reversionary leases under the 1958 Act. The third matter covered by the Act, which inciden- tally was not in the Bill as originally introduced, gives a further opportunity to landlords of less than six con- trolled dwellings to apply to the District Court to have the basic rent of any or all of these dwellings reviewed. This is in fact a reactivation of the provisions of Section 8 (la) of the Rent Restrictions Act, 1960, which, of course, was inserted in the 1960 Act by Section 4 (1) of the 1967 Act. This provision originally had a life of two years but many landlords who would have been entitled to make use of the provision apparently were unaware of the existence of the provisions and many practitioners may not have fully appreciated the pur- pose of the extremely complex Section 4 of the 1967 Act. At any rate such landlords have now been given a further year to bring applications for a review to the District Court. The last matter dealt with by the Act is one which will give great relief to conveyancing practitioners be- cause it clarifies, by amendment, the effect of the noto- rious Section 10 of the Rent Restrictions (Amendment) Act, 1967, which was so wide in its provisions as to require lessees of property held under long leases and who would for all practical purposes have been regarded as the "owners" of the premises to get their ground landlord's consent to the assignment of the premises on sale. The new Act excludes from the necessity for con- sent any house occupied for the purposes of his own residence by a person who holds it under a lease the term of which is more than twenty-one years. It should be noted that two of the provisions of the Act are retrospective, those relating to the right to a sporting lease which is to be retrospective to the 3rd March 1970, being the date on which the Department of Justice announced that amending legislation was to be introduced to deal with this matter and the second being the amendment of Section 10 of the Rent Restric- tions Act of 1967 which is to be retrospective to the date of the passing of that Act. JOHN F. BUCKLEY

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