Notices to quit are used to end a tenancy or occupancy agreement. This article is concerned with notices to quit an agricultural holding governed by the Agricultural Holdings Act 1986.
There is no particular form that a notice to quit should take under the Agricultural Holdings Act 1986, however, the following should be observed:
- the notice to quit must be given by the person entitled to the landlord’s reversionary estate and relate to the whole of the land comprised in the tenancy.
- the notice must clearly indicate to the tenant what it means and what it is trying to achieve.
- the notice to quit must leave no reasonable doubt as to when the tenant is required to quit and must accurately state the termination date.
- the notice cannot terminate the tenancy before the expiration of 12 months from the end of the then current year of the tenancy.
- where joint owners are the landlord, a notice may be given by any one of them, or by their duly authorised agent.
- where the landlord entertains any doubt as to the validity of a notice to quit, they may serve a further notice to quit ‘without prejudice’ to the effectiveness of the first.
- the notice must not be served in bad faith or contain representations that are deliberately or recklessly false.
Mannai test
Where a notice to quit contains errors, the Court can apply the Mannai test as a means to assess whether a notice is valid, notwithstanding the error.
The Mannai test was articulated by the House of Lords in Mannai Investment Co v Eagle Star Life Assurance [1997] AC 749. Its recent application has been to save otherwise erroneous notices on the basis that the “reasonable recipient” would not have been misled by the error and/or would have been in no doubt as to what meaning the notices were intended to convey.
Case review
The Mannai test has recently been considered by the Court of Appeal in OG Thomas Amaethyddiaeth Cyf and another v Turner and others [2022] EWCA Civ 1446.
This case involved an agricultural holding (governed by Agricultural Holdings Act 1986) held under an oral tenancy from year to year. The landlord served a bare notice to quit which was silent as to the reason it had been served. Since the landlord was not aware that the lease had been assigned to a company incorporated by the previous tenant, the notice was addressed to the previous tenant.
The issue the Court had to consider was whether the notice to quit was valid, despite having been addressed to the previous tenant rather than the company as the current tenant.
The Court allowed the tenant’s appeal and held that the notice to quit was invalid as clearly addressing a notice to quit to someone who is not in fact the tenant amounts to a failure to satisfy a “formal” or “essential” condition for the notice’s validity and cannot be saved on Mannai principles.
Lord Justice Lewison explained:
“[…]whether a notice addressed to and received by A is a notice “given” to B is not a question of interpretation at all. It is a question of satisfying formal conditions. […] a notice addressed to A and received by A cannot be regarded as being a notice given to B, even if A knows that B would have been the correct recipient of it.”
Conclusion
The case is an illustration that there are limitations to the Mannai principles as the test is not able to cure defective notices in all cases, even if the reasonable recipient of the notice may have been fully aware of the error.
The Mannai test can continue to be used to correct errors of expression (i.e. typographical errors) but not “substantive” errors made by the sender of the notice (like, as we have seen in this case, the identity of the tenant to be served with the notice).
It is therefore essential that advice is taken at the earliest possible opportunity as to the form and contents of a notice to quit that a landlord is considering serving.
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