An Education In Selling School Land

• Published date: 19 August 2021
• Subject Matter: Consumer Protection, Litigation, Mediation & Arbitration, Real Estate and Construction, Education, Trials & Appeals & Compensation, Real Estate
• Law Firm: Gatehouse Chambers
• Author: Mr David Peachey

It isn't often that the senior courts pronounce on the School Sites Acts, so the Supreme Court's recent judgment in Rittson-Thomas v Oxfordshire County Council [2021] UKSC 13 is welcome. The judgment is essential reading where any local education authority seeks to sell school land that may originally have been donated or sold for educational purposes under the School Sites Act 1841. It also provides useful guidance for the interpretation of older statutes.

Brief background to the School Sites Acts

The School Sites Act 1841 ("the Act") allowed for the creation of statutory trusts by which benefactors could donate up to one acre of land for use as a school. Sometimes land donated under the Act was already being used as schools, albeit located on private land; other donations allowed the creation of an altogether new school, often paid for by subscriptions of other charitably minded persons in the locality. Successive legislation resulted in sites originally conveyed under the Act now being owned by local education authorities, or being run as voluntary aided or voluntary controlled Church of England Schools.

The statutory trust created by the Act can take different forms, but must be for one of three prescribed purposes, for example the education of less well-off children in the parish. The key restriction, for the protection of the donor of the land, is what is often referred to as the "reverter clause", which provides that the land should revert to the donor (or his/her estate) if the land ceases to be used for the relevant statutory purpose. In other words, if a school was established under the act for the education of the less well-off in the parish, but later became a selective fee-paying school with no scholarships, the statutory purpose would be frustrated and the land would revert to the donor's estate. In 1987, the reverter provision was replaced with an automatic trust in favour of the donor's heirs.

In addition to the reverter/trust mechanism in the Act, there is provision for the donated land to be sold and the proceeds to be applied to the purchase of a new property, provided that the new property is used for the same statutory purpose as the original land. However, on one reading, this can only happen where the school is still in use as a school on the date that the land is sold. If the land is not used as a school as at the date of sale, the donor's heirs in Rittson-Thomas argued, the reverter clause is triggered. This reverter would mean...