Convictions against a landlord whose builders changed locks and cut off water have been upheld.
In Wu v Chelmsford City Council [2023] EWCA Crim 338, a landlord unsuccessfully attempted to overturn her Crown Court convictions for unlawful eviction and unlawful harassment under the Protection from Eviction Act 1977.
Under section 1(2) of the 1977 Act, unlawful eviction is committed if any person deprives the residential occupier of any premises of his occupation or attempts to do so. Under section 1(3A), unlawful harassment is committed if a person (without reasonable grounds) does acts likely to interfere with the peace or comfort of the residential occupier or members of their household or persistently withdraws or withholds services reasonably required for the occupation and (in either case) knows or has reasonable cause to believe that the conduct is likely to cause the residential occupier to give up the occupation of the whole or part of the premises or to refrain from exercising any right or pursuing any remedy.
Susan Wu was the landlord of 39 Godley Avenue, Chelmsford, a property she rented to a couple under an assured shorthold tenancy. The offences related to 13 June 2018, when Wu used her own key to enter the property with her partner and two builders. While one of the tenants was in the property the builders changed the locks to the main front door and addressed a leak by disconnecting the water and removing a section of pipework. The water was not reconnected when requested. The police attended but declined to intervene. The council’s housing officer advised Wu that she might be committing an offence and just after midnight on 14 June 2018 a new set of keys was provided to her tenants.
As a result of changing the locks she was convicted of two counts of unlawful eviction (one for each tenant) and as a result of disconnecting the water she was convicted of two counts of unlawful harassment (again one for each tenant). On each count she was sentenced to 12 months community order and also had to pay £1,000 compensation and £14,000 costs.
The Court of Appeal rejected her appeal. Although the actus reus of the section 1(2) offence charged required that the residential occupier be actually deprived of occupation (which had not happened in the present case), at her trial she had agreed legal directions which accepted that she had briefly deprived her tenants of their occupation. This led to the indictment being amended to omit the alternative inchoate offence (attempting to deprive a person of possession) when the facts were sufficient to have secured a conviction for that alternative offence. It would be quite unjust to allow her to resile from the admission.
Harassment under section 1(3A) does not require more than one act. R v Polycarpou (1978) 9 HLR 131 continues to be good authority. Still further, refusing to reconnect a water supply is capable of constituting a positive act rather than being a mere omission, as the appellant asserted. There was no need for there to have been a course of conduct within the meaning of harassment under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. The convictions were sound.
Elizabeth Haggerty is a barrister
