Upper Tribunal hands down judgment in EE and H3G v Wandsworth
The Upper Tribunal has handed down judgment in the appeal known as “Castlemaine”.
The Upper Tribunal found that the operators were tenants at will, not periodic tenants, so that they could regularise their position under Part 4 of the Electronic Communications Code. This is in line with the outcome of the decision of the Supreme Court in Compton Beauchamp. In this case the operators were jointly tenants under a lease contracted out of the 1954 Act who held over after the lease expired before the Code came into force.
It also decided that the omission of information in the supplemental information to a code notice was not fatal where the information was contained in the body of the notice as well.
Further, it found that two operators in joint occupation could each give separate notices for joint rights and did not have to give a joint notice, and that the operators’ joint occupation did not mean that each was the other’s “occupier” so as to nullify each other’s para 20 notice.
There is also an important decision on Part 4 and implied periodic tenants. Although the basis of the decision is that the operators were tenants at will, if they had been held to be implied periodic tenants then the Tribunal would still have found Part 4 was available. They fell within the policy identified by the Supreme Court in Compton Beauchamp just as much as On Tower did in the third conjoined appeal in that decision.
Oliver Radley-Gardner KC appeared for the operators on appeal and James Andrews-Tipler appeared in the FTT. They were instructed by Sabrina Cader and Duncan McLuckie of Winckworth Sherwood LLP.
The judgment is available here.
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