[2024] UKUT 37 (LC)

Painter House is a block of 24 flats. Peter House is a block of 14 flats, adjacent to Painter House so that the two look like a single building; but they have separate entrances and neither is accessible from inside the other. The flats in Painter House occupy the first to fifth floors, and those in Peter House the first to fourth floors; on the ground floor spanning both blocks is an office unit (“the Commercial Unit”), occupied by the appellant itself, Tower Hamlets Community Housing Limited. The appellant owns the freehold of the whole building, which is a single registered title comprising Painter House, Peter House, a little garden at the back, an outbuilding and some parking spaces. The footprint of the Commercial Unit is considerably larger than the floor area of the flats above it, but the Tribunal was not given any measurements so I cannot say how much larger its footprint is. Necessarily therefore part of the Commercial Unit has a flat roof.

It is important to say at the outset that the parties agree that the terms “Painter House” and “Peter House” refer to a block that includes the ground floor, being the eastern half of the Commercial Unit in the case of Painter House and the western half in the case of Peter House. The Commercial Unit is not divided internally into two halves, and we have to imagine a vertical division below the division between the two sets of flats. The FTT also used the terms “Painter House” and “Peter House” in that way, and I therefore do so too, although (because the parties agree on this point) I have heard no argument about that construction of the leases.

Of the 14 flats in Peter House, 13 are held on short-term tenancies and one (flat 14) is held on a long lease. There is no application to vary the lease of flat 14; I shall have to come back to it later since its terms were referred to in argument.

The appeal is about Painter House, where all 24 flats are held on long leases, most granted in 2007. The leases of 22 of the flats other than numbers 9 and 11 are in identical terms in all material respects (save that the numbering has gone awry in Flat 4; there is no application to vary that numbering). In the paragraphs below I set out and comment on the provisions relevant to the payment of service charges, copied from one of the 22 identical leases, and I then comment on the different provisions in the leases of flats 9 and 11.

The 22 identical leases say this:

“Local Authority District : London Borough of Tower Hamlets

Title Number(s) : EGL482597

Property : Plot 27 (Flat 14) Painter House Sidney Street London E1 2HU

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