Christopher Alan Rowland v Sharon Margaret Blades
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Jarman |
| Judgment Date | 04 November 2021 |
| Neutral Citation | [2021] EWHC 2928 (Ch) |
| Docket Number | Case No: CH-2021-000077 |
| Court | Chancery Division |
[2021] EWHC 2928 (Ch)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
IN THE BUSINESS AND PROPERTY COURTS
OF ENGLAND AND WALES
CHANCERY APPEALS (ChD)
On appeal from the order of Deputy Master Hansen
Dated 12 March 2021
Rolls Building
Fetter Lane, London, EC4A 1NC
HIS HONOUR JUDGE Jarman QC
Sitting as a judge of the High Court
Case No: CH-2021-000077
Mr Paul Dipré (instructed on direct access) for the appellant
Mr Thomas Roe QC and Mr Simon Lillington (instructed on direct access) for the respondent
Hearing dates: 29 October 2021
Approved Judgment
I direct that pursuant to CPR PD 39A para 6.1 no official shorthand note shall be taken of this Judgment and that copies of this version as handed down may be treated as authentic.
This judgment was handed down remotely and deemed to be at 10.30 am 4 November 2021
HIS HONOUR JUDGE Jarman QC
HHJ Jarman QC:
Dr Christopher Rowland appeals, with permission granted by Michael Green J, against the judgment of Deputy Master Hansen, concerning the amount his former partner, Ms Sharon Blades, should pay for having excluded him from the use of a jointly-owned weekend home from November 2009 to October 2015. The master awarded £59,958 as compensation for the exclusion based on expert evidence of rental values as a weekend holiday let. Dr Rowland contends that he ought to have been awarded £216,199. Ms Blades served in time a respondent's notice saying the award should be compensatory and based not on rental values but upon Dr Rowland's loss of enjoyment and that the appropriate figure on that basis is £36,000. Alternatively, the award of £59,958 is justified for the reasons given by the master on this basis and on its own terms. For reasons which are not clear the issue of permission for the cross-appeal was not dealt with until shortly before the hearing of the appeal was listed. I was asked to grant the same. I indicated I would deal with permission and the cross-appeal if permission were granted on a rolled-up basis at the hearing, and that is how it was dealt with.
The parties commenced their relationship in 2006. Each of them already had their own homes. Dr Rowland had a flat in West London and a country house in Surrey and Ms Blades had a house in Wooburn Green, Buckinghamshire. In 2008 they discussed purchasing a property in the countryside at which to spend their free time together, as Dr Rowland put it in his particulars of claim, or to use at weekends, holidays, to share with family and friends and for them to live in when they retired, as Ms Blades put it in her defence. In my judgment for present purposes there is no material difference between these two descriptions.
The property which they found is known as Tadmarton House. It is a large Grade II listed Italianate villa built in about 1830. It is set in 24 acres of grounds on a hill top with far reaching views of the surrounding countryside near to Banbury, Oxfordshire. It had been fully restored some years previously. The couple purchased it early in 2009 and it was registered in the names of both Dr Rowland and Ms Blades. The purchase monies of just over £1.5 million and associated costs were supplied by Dr Rowland.
The main issue before the master was how the beneficial ownership of Tadmarton House was held. Dr Rowland contended that it was held solely for him. Ms Blades contended that it was held for both of them as joint tenants in equity. On this issue the master found for Ms Blades. He found that Dr Rowland paid about £208,000 toward the structural upkeep of the property and that Ms Blades made a substantial financial contribution to its upkeep and running costs which was over £100,000. He ordered that it be sold and that the net proceeds of sale be divided equally between the couple. That part of the order is not challenged on appeal.
Later in 2009, Dr Rowland formed a relationship with another person. After Ms Blades discovered this she told Dr Rowland that she did not want him to take his new partner to Tadmarton House. Dr Rowland agreed not to do so, and kept to his word. Ms Blades spent most weekends there during this period. In October 2015 Dr Rowland's new relationship broke down and there was nothing thereafter to stop Dr Rowland also spending time there. The master found however that he chose not to do so. Accordingly, after buying such a grand property, Dr Rowland had the use of it for only a few months.
Before the master, Dr Rowland contended that his entitlement to occupy Tadmarton House had been excluded or restricted by Ms Blades from September 2009 until the end of October 2018. Ms Blades contended that the agreement between the two of them in 2009 that he should not take his new partner there did not amount to such exclusion or restriction. The master found that Ms Blades had excluded Dr Rowland, but only for 3 days per week over weekends as he also found that it was unlikely that Dr Rowland would have gone there during the week. He further found that the period of exclusion ran from 1 November 2009 to 31 October 2015. Again, those findings are not challenged on appeal.
At paragraph 149 of his judgment, the master said this, referring to Tadmarton House as the Property:
“It is the duty of the court applying the statutory principles to do justice between the parties with due regard to the statutory considerations. The first and second of these considerations are the intentions of Dr Rowland and Ms Blades as creators of the trust and the purposes for which the Property is held. The trust was created so that the Property should be their joint weekend/holiday home (a purpose that had failed by November 2009) and from that date I am satisfied that Ms Blades used the Property to the effective or constructive exclusion of Dr Rowland, at least so far as weekend usage is concerned. I say that for the following reasons. Ms Blades accepted in evidence that she “ made it plain from November 2009 that [the new partner] would not be welcome”. True it is, that on occasion she “invited” Dr Rowland to provide her with dates when he might want to visit the Property, but Ms Blades was very much in control of the agenda and in situ at the Property, certainly at weekends (which was the only time that Dr Rowland could realistically go), and any invitation was always subject to the clear proviso that Dr Rowland was not to attend at the Property with the new partner. That stipulation is perhaps understandable on one level, given Ms Blades' strong feelings on the subject, but I consider it to have been an unreasonable restriction and Ms Blades never withdrew it. I accept that Dr Rowland acknowledged Ms Blades' sensitivity around this subject, and agreed not to take the new partner to the Property, but I do not believe that I should hold this against Dr Rowland and find that he thereby voluntarily excluded himself. It seems reasonably clear that had Dr Rowland ignored Ms Blades' wishes and taken the new partner to the Property, there is every risk that there would have been another altercation of the kind that occurred in early 2011 when Ms Blades turned up at Dr Rowland's flat unexpectedly.”
Those findings were set out in a draft judgment which the master sent out to the parties. He invited written submissions as to the proper sum to award based on those findings. Dr Rowland based his written submissions on the report of the jointly-instructed expert, Mr Edward Briggs FRICS, dated November 2020.
The parties chose to ask the expert to provide three valuations in respect of the period 2009 to 2018, namely (1) the annual rent value, (2) the rental that would have been paid for the occasional weekend and holiday use at any time of choice based on daily rent by day of the week, and (3) the rental payable for “occasional weekend and short usage.”
The expert set out detailed calculations for each of the figures he arrived at, which were respectively; (1) £570,000; (2) £260 per day for weekends of 3 days and bank holiday use, and £104 per day for other days; (3) £485,000.
In calculating the latter figure, the expert concluded that the property could probably have been let for 26 weekends a year during the period April-September at £3,000 per weekend and for 10 weekends a year during the rest of the year at £2,000. He rounded the total to £100,000 and then applied a discount of 25% for letting agent charges, cleaning and laundry and of a further £10,000 for utility and insurance costs. Finally he applied a further adjustment downwards to arrive at appropriate figures for the period in question.
Dr Rowland in his written submissions to the master submitted that the appropriate rate was £650 per day three days per weekend, and then dividing by two to reflect Ms Blades' use, giving a figure for compensation of £288,800. The £650 figure was arrived at by taking a midpoint between high and low season rents of £2,500 for a three day weekend as calculated by the expert, giving a daily rate of £833, and then discounted for saved expenses.
Ms Blades' written submission was that the appropriate figure was £36,000, being compensation based on the loss of opportunity of enjoying going to Tadmarton House every other weekend for 6 years. Further or in the alternative, if the figure of the expert were adopted, namely £59,958, that should be discounted to £36,000 because not every opportunity to use Tadmarton House at the weekend would have had a value to Dr Rowland which equated to the rent that different people would pay for a weekend break.
The master dealt with these submissions in paragraphs 153–161 of his judgment as subsequently handed down.
At paragraph 155–6 he said this:
“I am bound to say that I was unpersuaded by either of the parties' submissions in relation to quantum. In my judgment, [Dr Rowland's] figures were...
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