Cases - Plough Investments Ltd v Manchester City Council
Record details
- Name
- Plough Investments Ltd v Manchester City Council
- Date
- (1989)
- Citation
- 1 EGLR 244
- Legislation
- Keywords
- Commercial property - landlord and tenant – service charge – tenant’s covenant to contribute to a specified proportion of the landlord’s costs in maintaining the exterior of the building – engineer’s fees - whether tenant’s obligation only extended to contributing to the engineer’s fee in relation to actual defects - dilapidations
- Summary
-
A steel-framed office building, built about in 1925, showed evidence of rusting to the steel structure. The owners commissioned a full structural survey that confirmed corrosion in places. The structural engineers assumed that all the steelwork in the external wall was corroded and recommended that the steel columns and beams be exposed, which would involve the removal of the cladding, shot blasting and then enclosing in concrete to prevent any future rusting.
The lessor covenanted to keep the exterior of the building in repair and the lessees were obliged to contribute a specified proportion of the cost of carrying out repairs.
It was held that only the structural engineer's fees in relation to actual defects were recoverable and not the fees in respect of reporting on the entire steel frame.
Therefore the fees included in a claim must be a fair representation of the likely cost to the landlord of the services to be rendered.
In the course of giving judgment, the court noted that:
'There were cracks when the leases were granted. A building of this sort, over 60 years old, is bound, in my view, to have some cracks in the bricks or blocks.'