In a guideline decision of interest to both property professionals and criminal lawyers, the High Court has ruled in the context of a burglary case that a house does not have to be a home in order to fit the statutory definition of a ‘dwelling’.
A man had been charged with burglary of a dwelling house under Section 9(1)(a) of the Theft Act 1968. The property concerned was a buy-to-let flat that was in every respect habitable but currently unoccupied. In those circumstances, the man’s lawyers argued that it was not a dwelling house and that it was thus a non-domestic burglary, a less serious offence to which he was willing to plead guilty.
A judge rejected those arguments and, in dismissing the man’s appeal, the Court referred to the Oxford English Dictionary definition of a ‘dwelling’ as ‘a house or other place of residence’. The property had been occupied by a tenant until two days before the break-in and the judge was amply justified in concluding that it remained a dwelling house even though it was not at the time inhabited as anyone’s home.