Thousands of people have done well out of Margaret Thatcher’s right to buy, including Labour’s Angela Rayner. But not everyone has been so lucky. Amongst the least-lucky are those leaseholders who purchased high-rise flats under right-to-buy and are now facing sky-high service charges. Amongst those, are the leaseholders in Verulam House in Hammersmith Grove who are facing service charges of between £17,500 and £21,500 for window replacements which they say are not needed. One of the problems for right-to-buy leaseholders is that although they are the ones picking up the bills, they have little say in the matter because they will always be in a minority.
Although residential leaseholders now have extensive rights to take over the management of their flats, they can only do this by acting collectively. For example, the statutory ‘right to manage’, introduced by the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002, can only apply where a majority of qualifying leaseholders are on board with it. But this is of no help to right-to-buy leaseholders where the majority of flats in a high-rise block are still owned by the local authority and let out as social housing. The most, to which those right-to-buy leaseholders are entitled, is the right to be consulted over proposed service charges under section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. But even this right to be consulted, is cut down for right-to-buy leaseholders because they do not have the same right to nominate their own contractor as is enjoyed by other private leaseholders. And even the prices may be higher as councils are constrained in their choice of contractor because of the need to comply with rigid procurement regulations, which means that they cannot shop around for the best deal.
Sometimes it seems that everywhere we look we see hand-wringing operational failure, particularly when it comes to public services. Some of that failure is gross and inexcusable, like a post office management prepared to sacrifice the lives of individual sub-postmasters to cover up for a broken computer system. Or the administrative failings which contributed to the 2017 Grenfell Tower Block fire and the loss of 72 lives. Or the silencing of whistleblowers which allowed a young nurse to continue killing babies in her care.
More often, operational failings are down to blistering managerial incompetence. Like a police service which never quite seems to get it right. Where police officers are told to dance with protesters instead of clearing a way to enable key workers to get to their jobs. Police officers who took it upon themselves to strip a schoolgirl naked, without even consulting her parents, purely because a teacher imagined that she could smell cannabis. A schizophrenic who was free to walk the streets and kill three strangers because officers had not enforced an arrest warrant issued months earlier. A police service which has, it would seem, given up entirely on the types of crime which can affect all of us, like domestic burglary, shoplifting, car crime or Internet scams. Some incompetence is strategically more serious, like a UK defence capability which has been allowed to become so run down that if the worst happened, we would have to throw up our hands in surrender.
It is no better when we go to our local town centres, with so many former department stores standing empty and boarded up. That’s assuming that we can even get to our local town centre and park our car without having to navigate a ‘pay by phone’ parking system. And why is it every supermarket checkout we go to appears to be short-staffed? No wonder many of us now prefer to shop online.
If we get closer to home, we find a Land Registry now taking up to year to process even the most routine applications. It never used to be like that. And it seems that scarcely a month goes by without another local authority filing, or threatening to file, notice under section 114 of the Local Government Finance Act 1988, because it has not been able to manage its own finances. Though strangely such failings never seem to be anyone’s fault.
I’m sorry, I missed what you just said?
What about covid?
Amongst the fallout from covid was the biggest change in Britain’s working habits for a generation. I’m talking about working from home. It is something which had already been happening before covid, with the development of electronic systems for remote working and online meeting-platforms like Microsoft Teams. All that the covid lockdowns did was to force the pace. Home working for many professionals has now become the norm. Nothing wrong with that. It means the 2 hours we previously spent each day pushing our way through the morning and evening rush hours, can now be devoted to something productive, like our work. Except it didn’t quite work like that. Covid quickly became the ‘go to’ excuse for any substandard service. ‘It’s covid! Innit!’ Sometimes it just feels that no-one cares any more. Oh Well!
But perhaps you do care about your work. Perhaps you want to be part of an in-house team that does its best for its corporate client and the wider public who pays its salaries. A team that makes the best use of the resources available to it, limited as they may be. The good news is that you are not alone. There are thousands of us out there
Getting Into Management – Your Chance to Make a Difference
Here, we are talking about middle management. You are the captain leading your troop, not the general sitting in your oak-panelled office far away from battle. If you work within a large legal department there will always be management opportunities arising from time to time, many of which may not be permanent. Some of these temporary management opportunities might be planned, such as someone going on maternity leave. Or it could be sudden and unplanned, like the chief executive who fell out of a tree. Yes – it really happened!
Going into management doesn’t just look good on a CV. Leadership is a valuable life skill. It is your opportunity to make a difference. To put your own ideas into effect. To make the changes, which you always wanted to make but never had the seniority to implement. To create the team you want to create. To re-set those client relationships which had previously become soured.
In practice most corporate management is a combination of administration and leadership. But it is down to you, how much time you spend dealing with the administrative chores and how much effort you put into leadership.
In the context of administration, there are the endless staff-appraisals and half-year appraisals; attendance at management team meetings; and recruitment, both temporary and permanent. Management styles vary in how much time is devoted to administrative tasks compared with leadership. But whatever happens, the time is spent dealing with those administrative tasks should not balloon to the exclusion of everything else. And even those administrative tasks can provide opportunities for you to demonstrate good leadership. So what makes a good manager? Here are some suggestions:
You look, act and sound like a manager. One of the first things which you might notice when you step into management is that it changes the way other people react to you. Not only the staff reporting to you. But other people as well. You are no longer one of the guys. You are the face of authority. It has to be like that, otherwise you would not be able to deal with the difficult things, like managing under-performance. Whether or not your team like you, you have to be able to command their respect.
You do your best to create an environment in which your staff are able to work efficiently. It is about making sure that they have the best systems within which they do their work and that those systems work as well as they can. Any distractions from productive work are kept to a minimum. Whilst convening staff meetings are an essential part of management, they must be kept to the business in hand. As you are leading the meeting, it is your job to keep discussion focused on the agenda. To brief the team on the things they need to be briefed and to provide an opportunity for constructive feedback. It should not degenerate into a grumble-session or a social chit-chat, more suited to a coffee-break. And try to keep it to the time you have allocated for it. Because all staff-meetings mean that there is less time for staff to do their chargeable-work. So don’t blame them when the monthly figures come in below target. There is no law that says that the meeting scheduled for 2 hours has to last for 2 hours, if you can get through the core business in 30 minutes. Remember that everyone’s time has a value. And remember that every awayday spent out of the office, ‘bonding’ with flipcharts, has a hidden cost above the tea and biscuits and hire of the venue. Can your team really afford to lose a day’s revenue? And here are two little secrets. The first is that some staff love awaydays, particularly if there are quizzes and cake-competitions. But most staff only go along because your senior management has told them to. Wouldn’t they rather be doing their jobs? The second little secret is that when the biggest multi-nationals organise awaydays for their staff, they usually do so over the course of a long weekend. But astonishingly, no one ever complains or demands time in lieu. Why? Would you complain about being given a free all-inclusive weekend at one of the UK’s top golfing-hotels – even if you don’t like golf?
The focus of your team is always outwards towards service delivery and not inwards towards itself. If your team does not deliver for its clients, what is the point of its existence? Let somebody else do the navel-gazing.
You take the trouble to know everything that is going on in your team. Like Lord Alan Sugar, you know every nut and bolt in your team’s product. This is not micro-management. It is about being alert to potential problems before they become a crisis. Electronic case-management systems now make it easy for managers to discreetly dip in and out of individual case files, just to make sure that everything is proceeding as it should, and without those difficult face-to-face meetings with your reportees.
You are clear in your communications with your team so that they know exactly what they are asked to do and that there is no scope for misunderstandings.
Your clients have confidence that you will look after their interests. Even the grumpiest client. They know that you are on their side. That they can turn to you if they have any concerns and receive a prompt and constructive response. You are their troubleshooter. In fact, one of the first things a new manager has to do is to try to repair those client-relationships which previously had not been quite as good as they should have been. You know what your client’s expectations are. It is for you to make sure that those expectations are being met, so that their work keeps coming through.
You lead from the front. You know the job well enough to guide individual members of your team who seek practical advice on operational decisions or solutions to problems. You don’t bat questions back with glib put-downs like, ‘have you tried looking it up?’ Unless you go further by pointing to a suggested source of reference. You take responsibility for your team’s performance. You are not like the chief of police who has never seriously walked the streets and defaults into hand-wringing mode whenever there is a major operational failure which they could have prevented. That chief of police would rather let subordinate officers ‘hang out to dry’ than take any personal criticism. It is the management culture which allowed the Rochdale child abuse scandal to happen. In practical terms, leading from the front can mean that you sit with your team instead of in the glass office at the end of the corridor.
You recognise talent within your team and are able to ‘grow’ individual members of your team. It is not just about having people with the right experience, it is also about recognizing someone’s potential to gain that experience and become a more valuable member of your team. It is about presenting those staff with assignments which will stretch their potential to the limit. One of the advantages of a ‘dip in-dip out’ electronic case management system, is that, like a dual control motor vehicle, you can safely delegate such tasks, knowing that it only takes a moment to take back control if there is a hint that something is about to go wrong.
You are your team’s ambassador. You provide the interface between clients and individual members of your team. You are the person clients will come to the moment they have concerns about the way your team is dealing with their work. If you’re not able to respond quickly and positively to those client-concerns, they may simply take their work away and outsource. Conversely, a job well done, can lead to more were coming through from that particular client including, possibly, entirely new streams of work. You are also someone who is able to repair client-relationships which may have previously become damaged before you even begun managing the team. So you are someone who takes the time and trouble to talk to your clients and to understand their expectations and future work-requirements as well as explaining to them what legal services your team is able to offer over and above what it is already providing to that client.
If the bulk of your team’s work is repetitive volume work, take a tip from Henry Ford. Install a conveyor belt. Metaphorically speaking of course. It means breaking down each volume transaction into a series of repetitive tasks spread between a team of fee earners at varying levels. So someone will be responsible for reviewing the instructions, opening up the file, and downloading land registry documentation and other key information, as well as formerly acknowledging those instructions. Someone more senior will review the land-title and identify any issues. Someone will prepare the initial documentation, based on the standard template, and then issue it. An experienced conveyancer will deal with the exchange of contracts and bring the transaction to completion, including preparation of the completion statement. Someone else will deal with the post-completion work, including submission of the land transaction return, where applicable, and registration formalities. Finally, someone will report back formally to the client regarding the transaction, as completed, with any matters which need to be flagged up for the future. And of course, you will allocate a time-slot for each task. Oh! And don’t forget ‘quality control.’
You do whatever is necessary to ensure, in terms of cost, speed of turnaround, and in the quality of the work, that what your team can deliver matches favourably with anything which the client would receive if they outsourced their work to someone else. In other words, your benchmark should be that of a commercial firm of similar size, expertise and resource.
This week, we read in the newspapers that planning applications have fallen to a 16-year low. According to reports, only 2,456 projects were granted planning permission during the second quarter of this year. Can it really be that low? The Home Builders Federation has warned that if this trend continues it will lead to a reduction in housing delivery of 44,000 homes a year, which would see supply for England fall to levels not seen for a decade. So what is it all about? If we want to get Britain building, shouldn’t we be issuing planning permissions like confetti?
According to Stewart Baseley, HBF Executive Chairman, the opposite has been happening, with the policy environment becoming increasingly anti-development and anti-business, resulting in a sharp fall in the number of homes being built. He added, “Fewer homes being built during an acute housing crisis has clear social implications, in particular for young people, and we’ll end up reducing the economic activity and cost jobs”.
So why is government policy skewed so much towards the ‘no’ lobby. Why at this critical time, has Michael Gove abolished the requirements for councils to have a five-year land supply for housing development? We’ve seen the same attitude towards green energy in which the ‘no’ lobby has been given a veto to block on-shore wind farms and the electricity pylons needed to transport green energy.
If you don’t believe there’s a housing crisis, look around you. Young people sleeping in shop doorways. Thirty-somethings still living with their mums because they can’t afford to get something of their own. Desperate renters in a bidding war with each other, just to find somewhere to live
It’s not just about supply and demand. The housing market itself has become distorted. Young couples cannot get on the property ladder because they are being priced out by a cash-rich buy-to-let market which is subsidized by the housing benefit system. Councils are having to rent back properties on their own estates just to meet their statutory housing obligations. The creation of a new class of middle-people plugging the gap in the provision of social housing, whilst at the same time taking their cut from the housing benefit system.
What has caused crazy state of affairs? What are the solutions? We start with the causes.
The causes of Britain’s 2023 housing crisis
There is no single cause of today’s housing crisis. There is a multiplicity of causes which, over the course of several decades, have converged together to create that crisis. Here they are.
The statutory right to buy
Remember that when statutory right to buy was introduced in 1981, there was no buy-to-let market. Most homes sold under right-to buy remained in owner-occupation until the private rental market opened up in the 1990s. We now have a situation in which, in some areas, up to one half of ex right-to buy properties are owned by private landlords and in many cases rented back to the same local authorities which originally sold them. There is also an intrinsic unfairness in the State gifting massive subsidies to a select group of people whom, by chance, are already in subsidised housing, at the expense of everyone else. Yet the government appears wedded to it. And why should any local authority invest public money in the provision of new social housing if, in three years’ time, they might be forced to sell it off at a discount.
Not enough new homes being built
I suspect that one of the reasons why fewer new homes are being built today than in previous decades, is that housebuilding is no longer as profitable as it once was. There are too many things getting in the way: one of them being shopping-list planning policies which are not only administratively slow but can also reduce the viability of a proposed housing development. It is quite right that any housing development must stand the cost of upgrading the public infrastructure required to serve the new development, including education and social facilities. It is also fair that someone who benefits financially from the grant of a large residential planning permission should contribute to the cost of providing affordable housing to those who cannot afford to buy privately on their estates. The issue is that the process of securing on-site affordable housing through the planning system is too cumbersome. Many housebuilders would quite willingly make a financial contribution towards the provision of off-site affordable housing, just to get the development of the ground, and which the local housing authority could then spend as it thinks appropriate in providing new affordable housing. And wouldn’t many cash-strapped housing authorities prefer a simple cash-injection?
The number of empty homes
According to official statistics, during 2022, the number of long-term empty homes in the UK stood at 248,633, up 5% on the previous year and which has increased annually since 2011 (excepting only the covid years). But it can’t be right that someone can choose to keep a residential property empty and unused whilst other people do not have a permanent home. In many of these cases, there are reasons why the property has remained empty for many years instead of being brought into beneficial occupation and use. An owner may have died or moved abroad or into residential care. Their whereabouts may have become untraceable. Perhaps no one has taken out probate in relation to a deceased’s estate. Maybe a property has remained empty for so long that it has become dilapidated and uninhabitable. But that doesn’t help Britain’s Housing crisis.
What about re-introducing rent controls? Wouldn’t that solve the crisis in rental accommodation?
Sadly no. Statutory rent controls never worked in the quarter century they were in force until their abolition by the Housing Act 1988. And there is no reason to suppose that they would work any better now. Until statutory rent controls were abolished at the beginning of 1990, safe legal advice to anyone thinking of renting out their home was “don’t”. Letting out a residential property carried too much risk. It wasn’t just that you might never get your property back. The rents you received for your property were not in your control. A rent tribunal could reduce it to a derisory level. Not only would you be accommodating another family. You would also be subsidising their living costs, even if they had more disposable income than you did. No one is going to volunteer to do that. It’s why someone working temporarily abroad might have been advised simply to leave their home empty, instead of renting it out to someone else.
What about the proposed abolition of section 21 no fault evictions?
Abolishing section 21 will give existing residential tenants a little more peace of mind, provided they keep to the terms of their tenancy. But it’s not going to make private renting more affordable. When section 21 was originally introduced by the Housing Act 1988, it was to give prospective residential landlords the confidence to let out their properties safe in the knowledge that they could get back vacant possession when needed. Back in 1988, no-fault eviction was not problematic for residential tenants because it was a new market and there were so many alternative properties to move into. Contrast that with the position today, where someone evicted from their existing rent the property might have nowhere else to go.
What about stamp duty holidays? Would that help first time buyers?
The problem with stamp duty holidays is that it leads to a stampede as desperate homebuyers try to get their purchases completed before the holiday ends. It’s great for Sellers, who can soak up the value of the tax-break by increasing property prices.
Here are the solutions which will work
Abolish right to buy. Now! It won’t solve Britain’s housing crisis. But it will stop it getting worse. It will also give councils the confidence they need to invest in the provision of new affordable housing, safe in the knowledge that it will be kept permanently available to meet future housing need.
Make the town planning system 100% self-financing, so lack of resource can no longer provide an excuse for delay. Where local planning authorities are still unable to determine planning applications within the statutory turnaround time, give developers the right to refer their planning applications to independent expert determination. The statutory appeals process is just too slow.
Give housebuilders the option of meeting their affordable housing responsibilities by paying a commuted sum to the council’s housing revenue account, to be spent on the provision of new affordable housing in the way the council considers most appropriate. Councils would love it. So would housebuilders. Make it part of the community infrastructure Levy.
Free up 248,633 long term empty homes by putting them in to public auction. Councils already have powers to compulsory purchase long term empty dwellings. But like the Empty Dwelling Management Orders, introduced by the Housing Act 2004, they are too slow and cumbersome to be of any practical use. So why not create a swift summary process whereby councils can apply to a magistrates’ court for an order forcing the sale of a long-term empty property?
For councils and other social housing providers to use the current collapse in the housing market to replenish their housing stock. There is no better time to do it. Yes-interest rates are currently high. But they won’t always be high. And think about the massive savings in the housing benefit budget if councils no longer had to rent back from private landlords to meet their statutory housing responsibilities.
Now the big question.
Will these ideas work in solving Britain’s Housing crisis? You can bet they will!
Last Sunday I copped a parking ticket. It was a complete surprise to me. I had parked in the same car park on and off for more than 30 years without problem. And isn’t parking supposed to be free on Sundays and public holidays? But not this Sunday.
It was only after I had arrived home that I noticed the little yellow package tucked behind my windscreen wiper. I opened it up to find that I was being punished for not having paid for my parking. That can’t be right? It’s Sunday? Perhaps the traffic attendant made a mistake? Perhaps he had forgotten what day it was? Perhaps he had woken up in the morning thinking it was Monday?
So, I drove back to the car park and looked around to see if there is any obvious sign about charges being introduced for Sunday parking. But there was nothing obvious except in the small print on the machine itself: which had recently been closed down because it was no longer taking cash. And there were no tickets being issued. It is now all pay by phone. Which brings me to another question. If there are no tickets to display, how does a parking attendant know whether someone has paid or not?
When I returned home again with my parking ticket, I searched online to try to find out when the rules for this particular car park had changed, as regards the introduction of Sunday charging, and what signage had been displayed to alert motorists that the rules have changed. But nothing came up. So, I posted a question to an AI platform and got back some Goan food recipes.
As I was not prepared to give up, I bowled in a statutory freedom of information request to the council which had issued the notice, asking the same questions. Now I don’t know how much it costs to answer a freedom of information request. But by the time it has been bounced around between different council departments and someone has spent half a day digging out this obscure piece of information and sending it back to me, I would not have thought that there would be much change out of £500.
As I had nothing to lose, I made representations to the local authority, explaining that I had made an honest mistake. As I expected, the council were quick to reject my representation. Though again, someone would have had to be paid to consider my representation and respond formally to it. If I wanted to take my appeal further, I would have to go to the parking adjudicator.
Appealing to a parking adjudicator is a double or nothing game because, by the time you make your appeal, you would already have lost your 50% discount for early payment. But my personal view is that if you think that a penalty charge notice is unfair and that you have grounds to appeal, you should appeal.
I went back to my AI platform and asked whether lack of adequate signage alerting me to the changes, provided grounds for appeal to a parking adjudicator. This time, instead of Goan recipes, it directed me to a government website, “Key Cases-London Tribunals”.
The first thing I noticed about this government website was that there are so few key decisions. I had been expecting thousands. When I typed ‘Sunday’ into the search- bar, nothing came up. I then browsed the section headed, “Adequacy of Signs and Lines”. There were only six key decisions, most of them dating back to 1990s. Really? So, it did not take me long to browse through the list. The key decision which most closely resembled my predicament was Mary Fairburn’s appeal against a notice issued by the London borough of Bexley, again where there had been a sudden change to the charging regime, to which she had not been alerted, except for the small print on the machine. In that 1997 case, Parking Adjudicator G.R. Hickinbottom expressed surprise that Bexley Council had not cancelled the notice on the basis of a genuine mistake but felt that he had no power to cancel the notice because an infringement had occurred.
So on the basis of Mary Fairburn’s decision, I will not waste time and further public expense pursuing an appeal to the parking adjudicator and will pay the PCN at the discounted 50% rate whilst I still have a few days to do so. Which brings me to a final thought.
I don’t understand the mentality of town centre parking policy. If you really wanted to help struggling local businesses, wouldn’t you want to make it as easy as possible for motorists to park their cars and get on with their shopping? No wonder town centre retail and entertainment chains like Wilco; Debenhams and Cineworld have gone to the wall.
How does a local authority assemble land for redevelopment, when parts of it are in unknown ownership? This article, recently published in Local Government Lawyer, will show you how.
Compulsory Purchase of Land in Unknown Ownership
The 1 March 2023 Upper Tribunal decision in Metropolitan Borough of Stockport v Unknown Owners makes clear that a local authority acquiring, under CPO, land in unknown ownership, is not legally obliged to serve notice to treat on an unknown owner before transferring title to itself.
The Upper Tribunal’s decision in Metropolitan Borough of Stockport v Unknown Owners, which was delivered on 1 March, 2023 under UTLC Case Nos: LC2-2021-145, 146, 150,152} is of significant practical importance for any local authority dealing with the compulsory acquisition of land in unknown ownership. Dealing with unknown ownership is a common situation for any local authority involved in a large compulsory purchase order affecting multiple properties. It can arise in either of the following situations.
In relation to a vacant building or piece of land for which there is no registered title or reputed owner. Whilst title documentation may exist somewhere in some long-forgotten deed-packet, the local authority has no means of finding it.
Where there is a registered title, but the registered owner is untraceable. This might happen where a registered owner has moved abroad or into care without leaving any forwarding address. Or more commonly, where an owner has died but no one has taken out any grant of representation in respect of their estate. The fact that no one has yet taken out a grant of representation in respect of a deceased’s estate does not automatically make the land bona vacantia, unless specific conditions apply.
Stockport Council’s situation was that it needed to acquire land at Hazel Grove (A6) to provide a new relief road linking the A6 to Manchester Airport. But it had been unable to identify ownership of five pieces of land, predominantly comprising woodland and pasture forming part of the bed and banks of Norbury Brook, south of Old Mill Lane, Hazel Grove, and varying in size from one square metre to 1,781 square metres. The acquisition was authorized by the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport (Hazel Grove (A6) to Manchester Airport A555 Classified Road) Compulsory Purchase Order 2013. The local authority had already entered on to the land and completed construction of the new road by 2018 but still needed to obtain title to the land.
The local authority had also obtained from the Upper Tribunal, a determination on what compensation was payable to each of the unknown owners. The only remaining step which the council had to take to perfect its title was to pay the assessed compensation into court and execute a Deed Poll to itself in accordance with Schedule 2 of the Compulsory Purchase Act 1965. The problem for the local authority was that the Court Funds Office refused to accept a payment into court because of perceived irregularities in the process adopted by the local authority to implement the CPO. The issue for the Court Funds Office was that the local authority had not served any Notices to Treat on the unknown owners of the land as required by Section 5 of the Compulsory Purchase Act 1965. That issue might have been avoided if, having made reasonable enquiries as to ownership, the local authority had gone through the motions of displaying Notices to Treat on the land itself. Even though no-one, other than an inquisitive passer-by, might have ever stopped to read the notices. But that is not the point. Making and enforcing a CPO is all about getting the process right.
After the Court Funds office had refused payment, the local authority had no choice but to go back to the Upper Tribunal for a further direction to allow the payments into court to take place. The Tribunal granted that declaration on 1 March 2023, five years after completion of the relief road.
Section 6 of the Acquisition of Land Act 1981 sets out the process for serving documents on unknown owners. If, after reasonable enquiry, it is not practicable to ascertain the name or address of an owner, lessee, tenant or occupier of land, relevant documents may be served by addressing it, by description, to the ‘Owner’, ‘Lessee’ or ‘occupier’ of the land and, in the case of vacant land, by leaving it or a copy of it on or near the land. It would seem that the local authority had complied with all these service requirements, except for the Notices to Treat themselves. The issue then for the Upper Tribunal was whether the council’s failure to affix Notices to Treat to the land was fatal to the implementation of the CPO so far as those pieces of land were concerned. As it was, the Upper Tribunal ruled that, in case of unknown ownership, service of Notices to Treat was not fundamental to the process. The key statutory provision was Section 5(1) of the Compulsory Purchase Act 1965 (notice to treat and untraced owners), which states:
“(1) When the acquiring authority require to purchase any of the land subject to compulsory purchase, they shall give notice (hereinafter in this Act referred to as a “notice to treat”) to all the persons interested in, or having power to sell and convey or release, the land, so far as known to the acquiring authority after making diligent inquiry.”
The Tribunal’s decision turned on its interpretation of the last dozen words of that subsection, which are underlined. The Tribunal’s view was that there was no requirement to give notice to unknown persons after the council had made diligent inquiry. It followed that no notices to treat were required to be served on owners of land whose identity is unknown, nor need for any such notices be posted on or near the land. A Notice to Treat only needs to be given to those whose identity is known. Its purpose is to invite the owner to participate in a negotiation. If the landowner has not come forward during the CPO confirmation process, despite the steps taken to bring it to their attention, and if they had not been identified despite diligence inquiry, such an invitation would be an empty gesture.
Paragraph 1 of Schedule 2 of the 1965 Act confers jurisdiction on the Tribunal to determine compensation payable to anyone who is either absent from the United Kingdom and uncontactable or who cannot be found after diligent inquiry. In either of those situations, an application can be made to the tribunal to determine the compensation payable, for which the acquiring authority must provide a detailed list of steps taken to locate the owner of the land, including when they were taken and their outcome. Once the tribunal has made its valuation, the acquiring authority is then authorised to pay the assessed compensation into court to the credit of the persons who would be entitled to it if their identities were known. Having paid that money into court, the local authority can then execute a Deed Poll transferring title to itself.
The tribunal decision does not list-out the detailed steps which the local authority took to try to identify ownership of the five pieces of land in question, only that these steps were sufficient to convince the Tribunal that proper inquiries had been undertaken. It is also important to point out that that diligent inquiry does not always mean exhaustive inquiry. It is not about attempting the impossible. It is doing what is reasonable and proportionate to try to identify a documented title. It is about following up obvious documented leads.
Maybe even checking the registered titles of adjoining properties to try to find a root-conveyance out of which the titles were granted. Checking any rating or other records. Putting in hand a local search.
Where there is a named owner, whose current whereabouts are unknown, due diligence inquiries would routinely include a probate search to establish whether there is any record of death or the appointment of any personal representatives. There are also legal presumptions of ownership which apply to the subsoil of a highway or to riparian rights. The Stockport case also begs the question why any acquiring authority still bothers issuing notices to treat, when it is administratively simpler to make a General Vesting Declaration.
With a GVD, title is transferred immediately on completion of legal formalities, with any compensation issues being postponed until such time as someone actually comes forward to claim compensation and evidence their entitlement. In the case of a forgotten strip of vacant land, that compensation claim may never even arise.
BRUCE AND HOLLY 