Notable JB Leitch Case Success in the Court of Appeal

Abacus Land 4 Limited v Bradley and Another [2025] EWCA Civ 1308

In respect of the Upper Tribunal’s decision following the leaseholders’ appeal earlier in 2024, permission was granted for the landlord to appeal to the Court of Appeal.

The Court of Appeal was asked to consider the important issue of how the First-tier Tribunal (“FTT”) should deal with challenges to the exercise of a landlord’s discretion, where a landlord had a contractual obligation to act reasonably.

The Court of Appeal’s decision, handed down yesterday, clarifies the scope of the FTT’s jurisdiction, which had potentially widened as a result of the Upper Tribunal’s (“UT”) decision (which found that the landlord’s contractual obligation to act reasonably required objective reasonableness).

Yesterday’s judgment highlights that the “FTT did not err in law, and the UT was not entitled to substitute its own view of the reasonableness or fairness of the Landlord’s decision”. The FTT could properly take the view that the decision (in this case) to recover costs via the service charge scheme was “not a decision of the type where it could be said that no reasonable landlord in a similar position could ever have made it”. Landlords can be entitled to prefer their own interests when designating costs as service charge, the landlord’s obligation to act reasonably in this lease does not require the landlord to act in a way which is “objectively” reasonable.

We will provide a full case analysis shortly. Legal Director Phil Parkinson and Associate Lauren Walker acted for our client with Tom Morris of Landmark Chambers instructed by JB Leitch.