In deciding whether to make an order under Chapter 2 of Part 2 of the Housing and Planning 2016 prohibiting a person from letting housing or engaging in letting agency or property management work in England the First-tier Tribunal must, amongst other things, consider the seriousness of the offence of which the person has been convicted.
The Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) has dismissed an appeal from a decision of the FTT making a banning order against the appellant in Knapp v Bristol City Council [2023] UKUT 118 (LC).
The appellant was a landlord in Bristol for more than 30 years and owned a portfolio of 29 properties held for residential letting. 18 of her properties were required to be licensed as HMOs under Part 2 of the Housing Act 2004. The respondent had been concerned over the quality of the appellant’s management of her portfolio for a number of years. The appellant promised to improve standards following a meeting in September 2016, but the FTT found that her promise and subsequent assurances were not kept.
The respondent took progressively more serious enforcement action against the appellant in 2020-2021. In April 2021 she was convicted of eight charges relating to three of her properties and fined a total of £22,000. All the charges were for banning order offences including the absence of fire doors between kitchens and living space, items of disrepair or poor standards of maintenance or cleanliness. The charges formed the basis of the respondent’s application to the FTT for a banning order.
The respondent acknowledged that viewed individually the offences were not of the most serious type but they gave rise to potential harm and were part of a consistent pattern of poor management over an extended period of time. On 9 August 2022 the FTT granted a banning order for a period of five years postponed for six months in respect of existing tenancies.
The appellant argued that the FTT had not considered the seriousness of the offences of which she had been convicted but referred simply to the fines imposed. The Tribunal did not consider that there was anything inappropriate in the way the FTT made its assessment. Its decision was based on the respondent’s submissions, the magistrates’ assessment of the seriousness of the offences as reflected in the fines imposed and the respondent’s policy and guidance which also treated the sentence imposed as a guide to the relative seriousness of the offences.
Louise Clark is a property law consultant and mediator
