Leasehold Property law. Personally delivered.
Leasehold Property law. Personally delivered.
Where a lease obliges a landlord to enforce other leaseholders' covenants, permitting one leaseholder to breach may put the landlord in breach to everybody else.
Reviewed 25 July 2026
A landlord asked for an accommodating consent, and minded to grant it, may be exposing itself to claims from every other leaseholder in the building.
Many leases contain a mutual enforcement covenant: a promise by the landlord that, at a leaseholder's request and cost, it will enforce the covenants in the other leases in the building. It exists so that a leaseholder suffering from a neighbour's breach has a route to a remedy.
In Duval v 11-13 Randolph Crescent Ltd the Supreme Court held in 2020 that a landlord who has given such a covenant cannot then license one leaseholder to do something the leases absolutely prohibit. Doing so puts it in breach of its obligation to the others.
It arises most often on licences to alter. A leaseholder proposes structural works that the lease prohibits outright. The landlord — frequently a resident management company run by neighbours — sees no harm in it and is inclined to consent. On the Duval principle it may not be free to, and a consent given in good faith can generate claims from leaseholders who never objected to the works themselves.
The same reasoning reaches deeds of variation that relax an absolute prohibition, and any other indulgence granted to one flat where the leases are mutually enforceable.
Read the enforcement covenant before responding to anything. Establish whether the covenant the leaseholder wants to depart from is absolute or qualified, because the principle bites on absolute prohibitions. And where it does bite, the answer is not simply to refuse but to consider varying the leases across the building, so that what is permitted is permitted for everybody.
That is more work, and it is the difference between a decision that holds and one that does not.
That a landlord's refusal may be principled rather than obstructive. A resident management company declining to consent to something its directors would personally be content with is often not being difficult — it is being properly advised.
Where that is the position, the route is a variation of all the leases in the building rather than a licence for yours alone. Under section 37 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 that can be done by majority: where more than eight leases are involved, at least 75% of the parties must consent and no more than 10% may object.
We advise landlords and management companies on consents that will stand up, and leaseholders on the route through when a refusal is well founded.
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This article reflects our understanding of the position on 25 July 2026 and is general information rather than legal advice. The law in this area is changing: take advice on your own circumstances before relying on it.
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