Dwelling House in UK Law

Nature of the damages recoverable and arising of the cause of action. Subject always to adequate proof of causation, these damages may include damages for personal injury and damage to property. In my opinion they may also include damage to the dwelling-house itself; for the whole purpose of the byelaws in requiring foundations to be of certain standard is to prevent damage arising from weakness of the foundations which is certain to endanger the health or safety of occupants.

To allow recovery for such damage to the house follows, in my opinion, from normal principle. If classification is required, the relevant damage is in my opinion material, physical damage, and what is recoverable is the amount of expenditure necessary to restore the dwelling to a condition in which it is no longer a danger to the health or safety of persons occupying and possibly (depending on the circumstances) expenses arising from necessary displacement.

Under the Rent Acts, in order to create a letting of part of a house as a separate dwelling there must be an agreement by which the occupier has exclusive possession of essential living rooms of a separate dwelling house.

The starting point must be that "dwelling-house" is not a term of art. While I accept that dictionaries cannot solve issues of interpretation, it nevertheless is helpful to bear in mind that dwelling-house has for centuries been a word of wide import. This context makes it inappropriate for the court to place restrictive glosses on the word "dwelling".

The words "dwell" and "dwelling" are not terms of art with a specialised legal meaning. They are ordinary English words, even if they are perhaps no longer in common use. They mean the same as "inhabit" and "habitation" or more precisely "abide" and "abode", and refer to the place where one lives and makes one's home.

When an application for planning consent is made for permission for a single operation, it is made in respect of the whole of the building operation. The first is the practical one that an application for permission partially to erect a building would, save in exceptional circumstances, fail. As counsel for Mr Sage accepted, if a building operation is not carried out, both externally and internally, fully in accordance with the permission, the whole operation is unlawful.

A less narrow view would be to say that "premises" includes not only dwelling-houses in the normal popular sense, but premises, which, for the purposes of the Rent Act, are treated as dwelling-houses, Everybody knows, and the draftsman must be taken to have known, that protection under the Rent Acts is given not merely to single, identifiable, pure dwelling-houses or dwelling units, but also to units of a mixed character—houses let with a garden or a yard or a garage or a paddock, houses part (even a substantial part) of which is used for business purposes.