The High Court declared that four households who rented maisonettes from Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council were entitled to the benefit of purchasing them at a price reflecting a valuation from within 12 months of the council’s adoption of a model sales scheme in 1995. The declaration was conditional on each household meeting the usual requirements for a local authority tenant to buy such a home.
The ruling, delivered by Macken J on 2 November 2005, followed proceedings brought by John Dunleavy, Thomas and Clara McDonald, Hermangild and Kathleen Wallace, and Garry Sinnott against the council. The court did not order immediate transfers. It did not determine the plaintiffs’ claim for breach of statutory duty or make findings on their discrimination and European Convention arguments.
The tenants said the council’s repeated invitations over many years to express interest in buying their homes, together with sales schemes and other dealings, led them to expect that they could buy. They said they spent money maintaining and improving the maisonettes and passed up opportunities to move to houses that they could have bought. The council disputed that it had promised a sale before making conditional offers in April 1999, and relied on legal and practical concerns about shared areas, services and title.
The judge rejected the argument that the 1979 sales scheme for houses automatically covered maisonettes. She also accepted that the council had reasonable grounds to exclude maisonettes from sale schemes while it considered legal uncertainties, at least until 1995. The 1979 letter, which asked tenants to register interest while expressly warning that the council was not obliged to sell, did not itself promise a sale.
But the court found that later dealings created a representation that sales would proceed if the paired maisonette tenants agreed to the terms. The judge said the tenants relied on that representation, including through maintenance spending and foregoing the chance to seek houses. Earlier schemes and prices had been superseded as tenants responded to later schemes; the court did not award them 1979 or other earlier prices.
After regulations addressing the sale of flats came into effect in 1995, the judge found the council had not justified the whole delay before making offers in 1999. Allowing nine to 12 months for legal advice and drafting was reasonable. The declaration therefore tied the purchase benefit to a valuation as if the homes had been offered within 12 months of the model scheme’s adoption in 1995.