Regency Villas Title Ltd and Others v Diamond Resorts (Europe) Ltd and Another
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Lord Briggs,Lady Hale,Lord Kerr,Lord Sumption,Lord Carnwath |
| Judgment Date | 14 November 2018 |
| Neutral Citation | [2018] UKSC 57 |
| Date | 14 November 2018 |
| Court | Supreme Court |
[2018] UKSC 57
Lady Hale, President
Lord Kerr
Lord Sumption
Lord Carnwath
Lord Briggs
Appellants/Cross Respondents
Tim Morshead QC
Toby Watkin
Andrew Latimer
(Instructed by Pannone Corporate LLP (Manchester) and Osborne Clarke LLP)
Respondents/Cross-Appellants
John Randall QC
Marc Brown
Katie Longstaff
(Instructed by Shakespeare Martineau LLP (Birmingham))
Appellants/Cross Respondents:-
(1) Diamond Resorts (Europe) Limited
(2) Diamond Resorts Broome Park Golf Limited
(3) Summit Developments Ltd
Respondents/Cross Appellants:-
(1) Regency Villas Title Limited
(2) George Edwards
(3) Victor Roberts
(4) The Estate of William Malcolm Ratcliffe Deceased
(5) Brian Andrews
Heard on 4 and 5 July 2018
( with whom Lady Hale, Lord Kerr and Lord Sumption agree)
This appeal offers an opportunity for this court to consider, for the first time, the extent to which the right to the free use of sporting and recreational facilities provided in a country club environment may be conferred upon the owners and occupiers of an adjacent timeshare complex by the use of freehold easements. In the well-known leading case of In re Ellenborough Park [1956] Ch 131 the Court of Appeal decided that the shared recreational use of a communal private garden could be conferred upon the owners of townhouses built around and near it by means of easements. The use of the same conveyancing technique in the present case in relation to a much wider range of activities was, if not misguided, at least a more ambitious undertaking. The essential question, if that case was rightly decided, is whether the same underlying principles work in the present context (as the trial judge and the Court of Appeal both held) or whether the attempt to do so falls foul of the necessary limitations upon the scope of easements in English law, most of which, as recently as 2011, the Law Commission has advised should not lightly be put aside.
The essence of an easement is that it is a species of property right, appurtenant to land, which confers rights over neighbouring land. The two parcels of land are traditionally, and helpfully, called the dominant tenement and the servient tenement. The effect of the rights being proprietary in nature is that they “run with the land” both for the benefit of the successive owners of the dominant tenement, and by way of burden upon the successive owners of the servient tenement. By contrast merely personal rights do not generally have those characteristics. Although owing much to the Roman law doctrine of servitudes, easements have in English law acquired an independent jurisprudence of their own, the essentials of which have been settled for many years, even if the uses of land during the same period have not stood still. Since the question whether a particular grant of, or claim to, rights is capable of having the enduring proprietary quality of an easement is usually (as here) fact intensive, it is convenient to begin with a summary of them.
Broome Park, formerly the home of Field Marshal Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, is a substantial country estate near Canterbury, with a large 17th century Grade I listed house (“the Mansion House”) at its heart, and a much smaller house, Elham House, nearby. Prior to 1967 Broome Park had been in common ownership. In early 1967 Elham House together with land around it lying entirely within the Park was conveyed off and its separate title was first registered on 30 March 1967. I shall call the house and its surrounding land “Elham House”. It is the alleged dominant tenement in relation to the disputed easement. I will refer to the rest of Broome Park, retained by the vendor in 1967, including the Mansion House, as “the Park”. It is the alleged servient tenement in relation to the disputed easement.
In or before 1979 the Park was acquired by Gulf Investments Ltd (“Gulf Investments”), a subsidiary of Gulf Shipping Lines Ltd (“Gulf Shipping”), for the purposes of developing a timeshare and leisure complex. The essential features of the development scheme included, first, the creation of 18 timeshare apartments on the upper two floors of the Mansion House; secondly, the creation of a communal club house for the timeshare owners and other paying members of the public on the ground floor and basement of the Mansion House including restaurant, TV, billiards and gymnasium facilities; and thirdly, the construction and laying out within the surrounding grounds of the Park of sporting and recreational facilities including an 18 hole golf course, an outdoor heated swimming pool, tennis and squash courts, and formal gardens. Individual purchasers of timeshare units within the apartments on the upper floors of the Mansion House formed themselves into the Broome Park Owners Club (“the BPOC”).
On 13 August 1980, Gulf Investments granted a 35-year lease of the first and second floors of the Mansion House to Gulf Leisure Developments Ltd, which was to hold the residential accommodation within the Mansion House on behalf of the BPOC. I will call it “the BPOC Lease”. It was drafted so as to confer upon owners of the timeshare units within the Mansion House the free use of the communal and leisure facilities within the lower part of the Mansion House and its surrounding grounds, including the golf course and other sporting and recreational facilities, for the full 35 year of the term, and Gulf Investments covenanted as landlord “to keep properly maintained repaired constructed and reconstructed” the ground floor and basement of the Mansion House and the sporting and recreational facilities provided within the Park, including the swimming pool, golf course, squash courts, tennis courts and formal gardens. The solicitor responsible for the conveyancing in connection with the development gave evidence at trial that a leasehold structure was chosen for this purpose because of the need to make appropriate provision for what might prove to be the large repairing and maintenance obligations arising from the status of the Mansion House as a Grade I listed building of some antiquity.
The early success of this development, centred on the Mansion House timeshare apartments, led Gulf Investments to plan a second timeshare development, this time centred upon Elham House. For that purpose, Elham House was re-acquired so as to be integrated within Broome Park in November 1980, and planning permission was obtained for the conversion of the house into two timeshare apartments, and for the building of 24 further timeshare apartments in its grounds, the whole to be re-named Regency Villas. It is evident from contemporary marketing materials that a main attraction held out to prospective buyers of timeshare units within the Regency Villas development was the same free use of the sporting and recreational facilities within the ground floor and basement of the Mansion House and within the Park, as had been afforded to the owners of timeshare units on the upper two floors of the Mansion House.
On this occasion however, it was decided to use a freehold rather than leasehold structure for Regency Villas, apparently because it was not anticipated that Elham House or the newly-built apartments in its grounds would give rise to the potentially onerous repairing obligations associated with the Mansion House. Thus, by a transfer dated 11 November 1981 (“the 1981 Transfer”) Gulf Investments transferred Elham House to Elham House Developments Ltd, another member of the Gulf Group headed by Gulf Shipping. On the following day, and as part of a pre-planned series of transactions, Elham House Developments Ltd transferred Elham House to Barclays Bank Trust Co Ltd, to be held for the benefit in due course of the members of the Regency Villas Owners Club (“RVOC”) to be constituted by the purchasers of timeshare units within the Regency Villas development.
The 1981 Transfer included the grant of rights which is the subject of the present dispute. I shall refer to that grant of rights as “the Facilities Grant”. The transfer itself has been lost, but the relevant terms of the Facilities Grant were duly recorded at HM Land Registry, on the Property Register in respect of the title to Elham House, and on the Charges Register against each of the two registered titles together constituting the Park. The words of the Facilities Grant appear in the last of three paragraphs, all of which it is appropriate to set out in full, so that the last paragraph appears in its context:
“TOGETHER WITH firstly the right of way for the Transferee its successors in title its lessees and the occupiers from time to time of the property at all times with or without vehicles for all purposes in connection with the use and enjoyment of the property over and along the drive ways and roadways (hereafter called ‘the roadways’) shown coloured blue on the plan attached hereto.
AND Secondly all the right to the full and free passage of gas water soil electricity and any other services from and to the property in and through any pipes drains wires cables or other conducting media now in under or over the Transferee's adjoining land or constructed within 80 years of the date hereof.
AND thirdly the right for the Transferee its successors in title its lessees and the occupiers from time to time of the property to use the swimming pool, golf course, squash courts, tennis courts, the ground and basement floor of the Broome Park Mansion House, gardens and any other sporting or recreational facilities (hereafter called ‘the facilities’) on the Transferor's adjoining estate.”
The 1981 Transfer also contained a covenant by...
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