ABSTRACT
Facts: Kingston Street, Hull, is a continuation of English Street (of which originally it may have been part) and terminates by running perpendicularly into a T-junction with Railway Street. Before it reaches this end, it crosses more or less at right angles an intersection with Commercial Road and Manor House Street. At one side of it, at the point nearest the intersection, is a derelict and ruinous Victorian warehouse which at some time has become, under the laws for the conservation of national heritage, a ‘listed building,’ which means that it cannot be demolished without the consent of the Secretary of State for the Environment. Even assuming a result favourable to demolition the total process is likely to last a year. In the events which have happened, the process is not yet complete, but, on the material before us, is likely to be concluded by the end of December 1980 or the beginning of January 1981. By that time, it will have lasted about 20 months. Since, in course of time, the Victorian warehouse became dangerous as well as derelict it evidently presented problems of safety to the Kingston-upon-Hull City Council. In 1978 they placed a restriction order on Kingston Street, and on 16 May 1979, they closed it altogether to vehicular traffic. Access to Kingston Street is not merely prohibited to vehicles, but rendered physically impossible, by the erection across it by the local authority of a fenced barrier. Opposite the ruinous listed building, there is another warehouse, more or less triangular in shape, the only access to which (except perhaps on foot) is via a loading bay in Kingston Street. The consequence of the application for demolition, and the subsequent proceedings, has been that, from 16 May 1979, until the time when the barriers are finally removed and the prohibition order lifted, this triangular warehouse has been rendered totally useless for the one purpose, that of a commercial warehouse, for which alone it is fitted, and for which alone, by the terms of the contract between the parties, it may be lawfully used. In 1974 the triangular warehouse had become the subject of a demise between the plaintiffs/respondents to these proceedings, the lessors, and the defendants/appellants. This demise was contained in a lease dated 12 July 1974, and was expressed to run for 10 years from 1 January 1974. The sole defence raised by the defendants/appellants to their obligation to pay rent was that, by reason of the events described above, the lease had become frustrated and was therefore wholly at an end.
