[2024] UKUT 193 (LC)

The right to buy legislation has been amended on a number of occasions; the provisions in the Housing Act 1980 were replaced by those of the Housing Act 1985, which was then amended by the Housing and Planning Act 1986 which came into force on 7 January 1987.

All the respondents’ leases were granted after that date. That means that all were subject to restrictions only as to the level of service charges recoverable for the first five years of the term: section 125, and Schedule 6 paragraphs 16B and 15C, of the Housing Act 1985 as amended. Accordingly none of the statutory provisions in the right to buy regime has any effect now upon the extent to which the service charges imposed by the leases are recoverable and I do not need to look further at that legislation. And I am not assisted by the decisions of the Tribunal and of the Court of Appeal in City of London v Leaseholders of Great Arthur House [2019] UKUT 341 (LC) and [2021] EWCA Civ 341, which were about leases where the landlord was obliged to make good structural defects.