A recent case illustrates why landlords and their managing agents should be careful when threatening tenants with eviction.
Landlords often have to deal with complaints from tenants, or concerns expressed by others about a particular tenant. This may result in the landlord threatening to take proceedings. Such a threat may cause distress to an occupier and their family, particularly if they deny the complaints.
These issues lie at the heart of the decision of the Court of Appeal in Worthington and another v Metropolitan Housing Trust Ltd [2018] EWCA Civ 1125. The trust is a social landlord. Colin Worthington and Lynda Parkin are two of its tenants of dwellings in the same street in Chesterfield. They both made complaints of anti-social behaviour by other residents living in their estate.
The events in question occurred between 2007 and 2008. They led to each of the tenants taking action seeking damages for harassment under section 1 of the Protection from Eviction Act 1997 (the 1997 Act). In June 2016, following a three-day trial, they were awarded damages for harassment (£4,750 and £4,160 respectively).
The landlord appealed, arguing that its conduct fell significantly short of the standard of gravity required to amount to harassment under the 1997 Act.
The legal framework
The 1997 Act was originally introduced to deal with the problem of stalking. But, a much wider range of behaviour than this is covered, including behaviour which alarms or distresses the victim.
A civil court can impose injunctions in harassment cases and award damages to the victim of the harassment.
The word “harassment” is not defined, though it includes causing alarm or distress (section 7(2) of the 1997 Act). The Court of Appeal analysed the two authorities raised by the parties on the meaning of harassment.
First, in Majrowski v Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Trust [2006] UKHL 34 (harassment in an employment context) it was said: “To cross the boundary from the regrettable to the unacceptable the gravity of the misconduct must be of an order which would sustain criminal liability under section 2. But conduct might be harassment even if no alarm or distress were in fact caused. A great deal is left to the wisdom of the courts to draw sensible lines between the ordinary banter and badinage of life and genuinely offensive and unacceptable behaviour.”
Secondly, in Sunderland City Council v Conn [2007] EWCA Civ 1492 (also an employment case) it was stated that one has to consider the context in which the conduct took place and whether it is of such gravity as to “justify the sanctions of the criminal law”.
It appears that the parties agreed on the basic legal framework. According to the complainant tenants, the landlord was guilty of harassment. The landlord, while accepting that there were some legitimate criticisms of how it handled the tenant’s complaints, denied they amounted to harassment under the Act. It also argued that it had done its best to deal with accusations of anti-social behaviour from all sides.
What led to the claims?
For years, Parkin had complained about anti-social behaviour by other residents. With the agreement of the landlord, she installed CCTV equipment into her home for the purposes of her own security. When she moved into a different house (in the same street) she was allowed to retain the CCTV equipment.
Worthington also had concerns over what he saw as the anti-social behaviour of residents. Before taking up residence in his current address, he had moved on four occasions because of anti-social behaviour. He set up a residents group with a website which was used to post information, including some commentary, on what he considered to be unacceptable behaviour.
Not surprisingly perhaps, these activities on the part of Parkin and Worthington gave rise to considerable hostility from their neighbours. They considered that Worthington and Parkin were causing a nuisance, that they were invading their privacy, and that their taking photographs of other residents, children and other young people was inappropriate.
It appears that the landlord’s management team then had a change of heart and took the position that it was Worthington and Parkin who were the source of the problems. They sent letters complaining about CCTV use, both to Parkin and Worthington, even though the latter did not have cameras in his home, and threatened possession proceedings.
The decision
In the county court, Judge Owen QC found that the landlord had employed an inexperienced manager who had misunderstood the issues and had got “a bee in his bonnet” about Parkin’s use of CCTV equipment. The senior managers should have realised that the junior manager had “got the wrong end of the stick” and that they should have given his work “careful scrutiny and supervision”, which was not provided.
It was this lack of supervision that led to solicitor’s letters being sent about CCTV even though the landlords had agreed to their use by Parkin (and Worthington did not have CCTV). There were other solicitor’s communications, including the threat of seeking injunctions and eventually the threat of seeking possession.
Judge Owen’s ruling has now been upheld by the Court of Appeal.
Kitchin LJ accepted that a reasonable person would think that the trust’s actions would cause alarm and distress to Worthington and Parkin, and rejected the trust’s submission that the letters it sent “were unexceptional and of a kind regularly sent by owners of social housing as part of their efforts to protect their wider body of tenants”.
He said that Worthington and Parkin had been “threatened with possession proceedings and accused of anti-social behaviour and taking inappropriate images of children”, yet the trust had “issued these threats without taking the most basic steps to ensure that they had a proper foundation”. In fact, they were “totally unjustified”, and crossed the line, amounting to harassment of the claimants.
James Driscoll is a solicitor and a writer
