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Collective enfranchisement Leasehold enfranchisement
Court of Appeal
Sir Andrew Morritt, CVO and Smith and Black LJJ
24 February 2011
[2011] EWCACiv 185
[2011] 09 EG 165 (CS]
Collective enfranchisement - Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 - Respondent applying to acquire freehold of part of building containing 20 flats - That part divisible into two sets of 1 0 flats - Whether property constituting "self-contained part of a building" - Whether that term denoting part incapable of further subdivision into smaller self-contained parts - Appeal dismissed
The respondent was the nominee purchaser for the purposes of an application by IO tenants, under the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993, to acquire, by collective enfranchisement, the freehold of the property in which their flats were located. Their flats formed part of a five-storey, terraced mansion building in London SWlI. The tenants' initial notice, served on the appellant freeholder under section IS, specified the properly to be enfranchised as the part of the building containing flats 41-60. This consisted of a vertically divided section of the building, which was itself divided into a left-hand and right-hand half, each containing IO flats, with separate entrances and common parts.
The appellant did not serve a counternotice but it disputed the right to enfranchise on the ground that the property...