No Protective Tenancy of Houseboat

Chelsea Yacht and Boat Club Ltd v Pope (CA TLR 7 June)

The Dinty Moore was a converted D-Day landing craft, fitted inside a steel barge owned by Chelsea Yacht and Boat Club Ltd, let to the defendant for six months by an agreement describing the parties as ‘landlord’ and ‘tenant’ following closely a precedent for an assured tenancy, although the precedent was headed by a note ‘Although the hiring of a chattel cannot strictly be termed a leasing, an agreement for the hiring of a houseboat may well follow the general form of an agreement for the tenancy of real property’. The Dinty Moore was moored astern to a pontoon by rope mooring lines, to an anchor in the river bed and to rings in the river wall. It was afloat for about six hours and aground for the next six hours. On the pontoons, the club provided plug-in or snap-on connections for water, gas, electricity, telephone and vacuum drainage. It was used by the defendant as his home, but could it qualify as an assured tenancy within s1(1) of the Housing Act 1988? The answer was ‘No’. To qualify as an assured tenancy the houseboat would have to be annexed to the land so as to make it part of that land. The Dinty Moore was in truth a chattel, attached to the river wall and the river by ropes and service connections, which could be untied and disconnected, without undue effort, to enable it to be towed away. Its degree of annexation did not require recognition of it as part of the land.