Section 30A of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 gives effect to the Schedule of the Act, hiding what seems like a treasure-trove of rights for leaseholders to help shine a light on how their building is insured.
In short, the Schedule allows a leaseholder to request a summary of the insurance cover and a further right to inspect and copy any relevant policy or associated documents. The statute extends to involve superior landlords where the immediate landlord is not responsible for insuring. Information or access must be provided by the landlord within 21 days of the service of the relevant notice on them.
The penalty for non-compliance with either the obligation to provide the summary on request or to provide access on request is a conviction in the Magistrates’ Court and a fine not exceeding £2,500.
These rights to information seem to provide a powerful weapon in the arsenal of a leaseholder dissatisfied with the buildings insurance provided for them, and a strong incentive for landlords to provide the information requested, but the truth is that enforcement of the aforementioned provisions is all too rare. Local authorities are imbued with the power to prosecute, but convincing a Tenancy Relations Officer to incur the cost of a prosecution can be tricky. Laying an information at the Magistrates’ Court in order to privately prosecute a wayward landlord is time-consuming and can be costly. Most frustratingly, even if the landlord is found guilty of an offence, no obligation then arises on them to then provide the insurance information – they simply pay the fine imposed.
Lessees may turn to the contractual rights contained in their lease to provide insurance information, where a civil remedy for non-compliance is the seeking a court order of specific performance. This comes loaded with the risk that costs could not be recovered or, worse yet, the landlord’s cost of defending the claim is passed on to lessees through the service charge. Claimants must be mindful of the risk of starting a run of court and tribunal applications to achieve satisfaction before starting down this road.
It is regrettable that the Court of Appeal decision in Morshead Mansions Limited v Leon di Marco [2014] EWCA Civ 96 reversed an earlier High Court decision to allow lessees a civil remedy against a landlord who had failed to comply with their statutory obligation to provide service charge information under Sections 21 and 22 of the 1985 Act, which would have presumably extended to the insurance provisions in the Act. This leaves leaseholders with the need to rely on their lease provisions for a court order to provide information, or to commence proceedings in the court or the First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) and have the information adduced by order of the presiding judge.
In summary, the right to insurance information for leaseholders exists in both statute and common law, but leaseholders facing a dispute would do well to take good advice on how best to pursue their landlord before commencing a potentially complicated dispute.
Christopher Last, Solicitor at Dean Wilson LLP
