Barber and Harris v Southwark LBC
When Southwark's secure council tenants exercised their statutory right to buy their flats, the council's practice was to offer a 125-year lease on its standard terms. One of these terms said that a tenant only had the right to use the common facilities of the building if the tenant was complying with all the obligations of his/her lease.

On appeal, the judge decided the term was unreasonable and disproportionate. It could deprive the occupiers of their rights to get to their homes simply because they had committed minor or trivial breaches of their obligations under the lease. Councils already had adequate powers to deal with tenants in breach of their leases, the judge felt.

The council could not meet the legal threshold of showing that the standard clause was "reasonable in all the circumstances" and therefore it had to be omitted. The judge dismissed several other objections to the draft lease.

Source

Housing Today

Reference

Councils should periodically review their standard draft right-to-buy leases to check no terms are unreasonable. Every right-to-buy section should obtain this judgment and check it against its own standard terms.