[14]“Section 72(1)(a) was drafted with such an economy of wording as to make its interpretation not entirely clear. The problem lies with the words after the comma, “with or without appurtenant property”. Do these words mean that if the self-contained building has appurtenant property “the premises” for the purposes of the Act consist of the building plus such appurtenant property as the building may have? Or does it mean that if the building has appurtenant property “the premises” can either consist of the building plus the appurtenant property or the building alone, leaving it to the claim notice to specify under section 80(2) which of these, for the purposes of the claim, it is? I think it must be the first of these, so that the effect of a valid notice is to extend the right to manage to any property appurtenant to the building or part of a building. It would be unsatisfactory if a claim notice had to specify whether or not it was made in respect of appurtenant property. The Right to Manage (Prescribed Particulars and Forms) (England) Regulations 2010 do not require this, nor does the form in Schedule 2 of the Regulations provide for any more than a statement of the name of the premises to which the notice relates.”[58]The Tribunal’s decision in Gala Unity was the subject of an appeal to the Court of Appeal ( [2012] EWCA Civ 1372 ) where it was upheld. The only question considered by the Court of Appeal was whether the appurtenant property must appertain exclusively to the self contained building which is the subject of the claim , so that property over which a number of different buildings shared appurtenant rights could not be part of the premises over which RTM could be claimed. The Tribunal had held that there was no such condition and that jointly appurtenant property could be the subject of RTM; the Court of Appeal agreed.59. The respondent relies on Gala Unity as determinative of the appurtenant property issue, but once again the appellant seeks to distinguish the decision and invites me not to follow it. In his written submissions Mr Radley-Gardner accepted that the physical extent of the premises which will be the subject of RTM (and in particular the extent of appurtenant property) is not a matter to be determined by the leasehold valuation tribunal; the appurtenant property, whatever it amounts to, is automatically within the claim. Nonetheless, he contends, it is critical to know the details of what are, and what are not, claimed to be the “premises” which are the subject of the claim. That procedural question was not considered in Gala Unity but, he suggests, it is essential to the statutory scheme because of sections 73(4) and 81(3) .60. Section 73(4) provides that a company cannot be an RTM company if another company is already an RTM company in relation to the premises, or any premises containing or contained in the premises. Section 81(3) provides that where any premises have been specified in a claim notice, no subsequent claim notice which specifies those premises, or any premises containing or contained in the premises, may be given so long as the earlier claim notice continues in force. There cannot be competing claims to RTM in respect of the same premises specified in a claim notice.61. There is, it seems too me, no real force in the appellant’s contention. The Court of Appeal has decided in Gala Unity that appurtenant property need not pertain exclusively to the self contained buildings which are the subject of an RTM claim. Shared appurtenances are common place and the potential for more than one party to have management responsibility for such appurtenances is therefore part of the statutory scheme, as the Court of Appeal recognised. It would be nonsensical to suggest that management functions in relation to appurtenant property may be exercised simultaneously by an RTM company and by the landlord of the building, but may not be exercised simultaneously by an RTM company and another RTM company which manages an adjacent building, and I reject the appellant’s suggested construction of sections 73(4) and 81(3) to that effect. I can see no reason why, in a scheme which extends to shared appurtenances, the fact that one RTM company is already exercising management functions over such property should preclude another RTM company from doing the same. Sections 73(4) and 81(3) do not create or imply such a prohibition because they do not require that the specification of the premises over which RTM is claimed should include a description of any appurtenances enjoyed with the building. The purpose of the notice is to identify the premises, but that is sufficiently achieved by identifying each self contained building to which the claim relates, as was done it Gala Unity . Both the giver and the receivers of the notice know the additional property, if any, which is appurtenant to that building because they are all either parties to the leases of the building which confer rights over the appurtenant property or a tribunal appointed manager of the building. The identification of the building over which RTM is claimed is therefore a sufficient specification of the premises to satisfy the requirement of section 80(2).62. Consistently with that approach to the statutory scheme, the prescribed form of claim notice requires only that the premises be named, and makes no provision for any appurtenant property to be described or referred to by a plan or otherwise (contrast section 13(3)(a)(iii) of the 1993 Act, which requires appurtenant property to which a claim for collective enfranchisement relates to be specified and shown on a plan).63. Mr Radley-Gardner next draws attention to the formulaic approach taken to the drafting of the Claim Notice in this case and contrasts it with the requirement in section 80(2) that not only must a claim notice specify the premises which are the subject of the claim, but it must also contain a statement of the grounds on which it is claimed that the premises which have been specified are premises to which the RTM provisions apply. I have set out the form of the Claim Notice in paragraph 7 above and, as will be seen, it does no more than recite the statutory conditions to be found in section 72(1). In particular it does not state whether it is asserted that the premises are a self-contained building as opposed to part of a building, nor whether or not it contains appurtenant property, nor specifically how many flats held by qualifying tenants it is said to contain.64. It may be that the draftsman of the Claim Notice had two objects in mind when completing the prescribed form in this way, namely economy (no thought is required to complete a claim notice in this form) and the avoidance of risk (that if a more considered attempt is made to state the grounds on which it is claimed that the Act applies, it may later be alleged that some fatal error has been made which invalidates the whole procedure). Whatever the reason, and however unhelpful the technique, the question remains whether the form of Claim Notice complied with the requirement of section 80(2) to state the grounds on which it is claimed that the premises are premises to which the RTM provisions of the 2003 Act applies.65. The object of section 80(2) is to ensure that the recipient of the notice is aware of the premises themselves and the basis on which the claim is being asserted. A claim notice is not required to be comprehensive and should contain a statement of grounds, rather than full particulars of the detail of the claim (much of which is provided in the schedule to the notice). Whether it does contain such a statement will obviously depend on the nature of the case which the RTM company intends to advance in support of its claim and the terms in which the statement is framed, and no universal rule can be formulated.66. Experience of claims to acquire RTM demonstrates that some recipients of a claim notice will take every possible point available to them in challenging an RTM company’s assertion of entitlement. Such points are often ingenious and sometimes they are successful, but when examined very many lack both substance and merit. A landlord is not to be criticised for adopting that tactic; it is entitled to put a claimant to proof that it has complied fully with the relevant statutory procedures, and if it is takes the view that a claim is vulnerable to a technical challenge it is entitled to have regard to its own interests and to make that challenge.67. Nonetheless, the consequence of the approach I have described, of which the appellant’s original seven pronged challenge to the Claim Notice in this case is not atypical, is that an RTM company and its advisers sometimes adopt a safety-first approach to drafting a claim notice in expectation of such challenges. Rather than provide details which will only be picked over in search of some inconsistency or supposedly fatal omission, the cautious draftsman seeks to keep all options open by framing the claim notice in the most general terms. The result in some ways is unhelpful, but I do not consider it to be inaccurate or impermissible, if it informs the recipient of the case which the giver of the notice intends to put forward.68. In my judgment the Claim Notice in this case was not defective. The notice correctly anticipated that the RTM claim would be strenuously resisted and I read it as informing the appellant that the respondent intended to claim that the premises were within the Act by employing every possible permutation of the statutory grounds which were available to it. So long as that statement was a proper reflection of the basis of the claim it satisfied the requirement of section 80(2). Before the LVT the appellant raised the omission from the Claim Notice of any reference to specific appurtenant property, but it did not suggest that the statement itself was inaccurate.69. The appellant also submits that it is part of the function of the claim notice to achieve clarity as to the property and rights which will come within the management responsibility of the RTM company when the RTM project is brought to fruition. Such clarity is essential, it is said, to define the respective roles of the landlord and the RTM company and to enable the notices required by section 92 to be given to third parties who will be affected by the change in management. I do not agree.70. It is a striking feature of the statutory scheme that no general jurisdiction to resolve disputes is given to the tribunal tasked with determining whether or not the RTM company is entitled to acquire RTM. The tribunal’s jurisdiction under section 84(3) is binary: yes, on the relevant day the company was entitled to acquire RTM, or no it was not. Taken together with other significant features of the scheme, including the minimal qualifying conditions to be satisfied before RTM is achieved and the absence of any requirement of fault on the part of the landlord, this suggests a statutory policy to minimise complexity and uncertainty in the achievement of RTM, while leaving any questions over the consequences of the company exercising the right to be worked out after that event. There would be considerable potential for real or manufactured disputes over the extent or description of appurtenances identified in a claim notice, creating a risk of lengthy delay while such disputes were resolved. The structure and simplicity of the procedures laid down by the Act suggest that such disputes are not to delay the achievement of RTM. That approach has the considerable advantage that only genuine disputes, and not purely tactical quibbles, are likely to require to be resolved by the court or tribunal (for example on an application relating to the recoverability of service charges for work undertaken to appurtenant property as the Tribunal suggested in paragraph 17 of Gala Unity).71. The possibility of genuine disagreement or uncertainty over the extent of appurtenant property or other issues obviously cannot be ruled out, but nothing in the 2002 Act suggests that such disagreement was to be resolved in advance. There is therefore no justification for requiring the claim notice to include a comprehensive statement of the appurtenant property over which the RTM company asserts an entitlement to exercise RTM, or of the grounds on which it is said that that property is appurtenant. Disposal72. I am therefore satisfied that the LVT was correct to dismiss the appellant’s complaint that the Claim Notice was defective. I conclude: 1. A claim notice is not invalid by reason only of having been signed by an RTM company’s solicitor or other authorised agent. 2. A claim notice need not specify whether the premises to which the claim relates do or do not include appurtenant property.73. For these reasons the appeal is dismissed. Martin Rodger QC Deputy President 4 December 2013