The High Court has ruled that owners and occupiers of apartments at One Beacon in Sandyford have no general right to pass through the adjacent Beacon Court Hotel. It held that Beacon Leisure Investments Limited may restrict use of the connecting doors, but must allow them to serve as an emergency exit from the apartments through the hotel lobbies and stairwells.
The dispute was brought by Beacon One Management Company CLG, which sought an injunction to stop the hotel from restricting access. The parties agreed that the court should finally decide the dispute on an interlocutory application because it turned on the construction of deeds. The judgment does not describe a trial of the wider dispute.
The apartment owners had used doors at the ends of corridors on floors two to seven to reach lobbies, a stairwell and the hotel corridors. After the hotel changed hands in 2016, its new operator said it intended to deactivate the access fobs while linking the locks to the apartment building’s fire alarm, so the doors would unlock in an emergency. The court said the parties accepted that the legal right to restrict access was decisive; whether the hotel’s decision was justified by users’ behaviour was not the issue it had to resolve.
The management company argued that rights in the apartment leases and a later transfer of common areas gave owners access through the hotel. The court examined the deeds in the order they were made, starting with the hotel lease of 4 March 2005. It found that the hotel had already been demised under that lease and that it contained no reservation granting apartment owners general access. The later apartment leases could not create rights over the hotel that the earlier lease had not reserved.
The judge also rejected the argument that the apartment leases’ definition of estate common areas included the hotel. Read in context, that interpretation would have allowed apartment owners to pass through the hotel and other parts of the mixed-use development, including the hospital and shops. The judgment said the leases did not confer the claimed right. It also noted that the leases, rather than marketing brochures, set out the owners’ legal rights.
The ruling leaves emergency egress intact. The hotel had not disputed the apartment owners’ entitlement to use the lobbies and stairwell as an escape route, and the proposed fire-alarm link would unlock the doors in an emergency. The court’s conclusion was limited to access rights under the deeds and the hotel’s ability to restrict ordinary use of the connecting doors.