Survivorship

Birmingham City Council v Walker HL TLR 18 May

Part IV of the Housing Act 1985, which consolidated the law on secure tenancies, provided in s89 that where, on a secure tenant’s death, there was a person qualified to succeed, the tenancy vested in that person, and provided in s87 that a family member occupying the house at the time of the death was so qualified, unless that tenant was herself a ‘successor’ as defined in s88(1) which, in paragraph (b), included the case where the tenant ‘was a joint tenant who has become the sole tenant’. The question was whether the words ‘has become the sole tenant’ referred to any time in the past or was limited to a case where she became the sole tenant under a secure tenancy, namely, after the 1980 Act came into force. The word ‘successor’ most naturally meant successor to a secure tenancy, and while ‘successor’ was a defined expression, its ordinary meaning was part of the material which could be used to construe the definition. There is a general presumption against retrospectivity. One did not expect rights conferred by statute to be destroyed by events which took place before it was passed. There was no rational purpose in giving the definitions a retrospective effect. It therefore followed that ‘he was a joint tenant and has become the sole tenant’. Section 88(1)(b) meant that he was a joint tenant under a secure tenancy and had become the sole tenant under a secure tenancy. In the present case in 1965 a joint tenancy of a council house was granted to Peter Walker’s parents, with whom he lived. On the introduction of secure tenancies by the Housing Act 1980, his mother, who had become the sole tenant on the death of the appellant’s father, became a secure tenant. The defendant was still living with his mother when she died in 2004.