Leases and Licences Flashcards
What is a licence?
A licence is a permission to access or use another’s land.
What are the two principal types of licences?
Bare licences and contractual licences.
What is a bare licence?
A gratuitous permission to enter another’s land.
What is a contractual licence?
A permission granted in return for some consideration (typically a money payment).
What is the relationship between bare licences and trespassing?
If you are given a bare licence to land it means you do not commit a trespass by doing so.
How much security do you have with a bare licence?
You have no right that I don’t change my mind and revoke the licence.
What happens if you revoke a bare licence after someone has entered the land.
They must leave…but in a reasonable time.
What happens if I grant you a contractual licence?
I am obligated to give effect to it. Any attempt to revoke it is a breach of contract.
What’s the appropriate remedy for the breach of a contractual licence?
Default position: award specific performance (requiring licensors to honour the agreement) or an injunction (stopping the licensor from removing the licensee): e.g. Verrall v Great Yarmouth BC.
With bare licences, if the licencor transfers the land to a third party, but happens to the licence?
With bare licences, just as A can revoke at any time, so too can C.
What did Errington v Errington (1950) decide?
That a contractual licence did bind third parties. (Since reversed).
Criticism: It doesn’t follow that because B’s rights are specifically enforceable against A they must be binding on C as well. C hasn’t promised anything and hasn’t received consideration.
What did Ashburn Anstalt v Arnold (1989) decide?
Reversed Errington v Errington. The CA held that contractual licences bind only the parties to the contract, so don’t affect third parties…unless C undertakes to give effect to B’s rights, then b will have a claim against C.
His own undertaking generates ‘new’ rights in B as against C.
What does B receive when he is granted a lease from A?
An estate in land, which binds prima facie everyone.
What is the basic distinction between leases and licences?
Leases are proprietary rights, whereas licences are contractual rights. Leases can thus be enforced against third party purchases of the land.
What are the statutory protections offered to lessees but not to licensees?
1) Right not to be evicted without due process and a court order (Housing Act 1988, s 8).
2) Right to challenge rent increases on the basis that they exceed rents currently charged on comparable properties (HA 1988, ss 13-14).
