It is an established principle of due process and justice that a court or tribunal must give reasons for its decisions.
Fairness requires that litigants understand why they have won or lost a case. This is especially true in respect of the losing party, who must determine whether to appeal in circumstances where it is believed that the court or tribunal may have misdirected itself. The Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) in Boukadida and others v Priory Place (Abbey Wood) RTM Co Ltd and another [2021] UKUT 160 (LC); [2021] PLSCS 127 has reinforced the importance of this aspect of the First-tier Tribunal’s duty in relation to service charge disputes.
In Boukadida and others, the FTT had dismissed the entirety of the appellant leaseholders’ challenges to the reasonableness and payability of service charges and interim charges levied by the RTM companies. In so doing, the FTT relied heavily on the written closing submissions of the RTM companies, without reference to the leaseholders’ closing submissions or the issues they had raised. The leaseholders appealed in respect of the adequacy of the FTT’s treatment of their case and the sufficiency of its reasoning.
In allowing the leaseholders’ appeal, the UT commented that under rule 36(2)(b) of the Tribunal Procedure (First-tier Tribunal) (Property Chamber) Rules 2013, the FTT was obligated to provide written reasons for its decisions. Relying upon English v Emery Reinbold & Strick Ltd [2002] 1 WLR 2409, the UT reiterated that when handing down judgment, a judge was not required to deal with every argument presented by a party, but “the terms of the judgment should enable the parties and any appellate tribunal readily to analyse the reasoning that was essential to the judge’s decision”.
The UT additionally provided the following useful guidance in respect of the level of detail required to be given by the FTT in its determinations relating to service charge disputes. First, the FTT dealing with a service charge dispute that involved a large number of technical and factual issues could rightly deal with a number of issues as a group, without delving into detail on each and every one.
Second, where charges were disputed on a number of distinct grounds, each of which would provide an independent defence to liability, it was mandatory for the FTT to consider each ground of challenge, and to explain its reasons for dismissing it, at least until it had found a challenge which it accepted provided a complete defence.
Third, the FTT did not need to address every argument presented in support of a party’s case, but it did need to deal with every issue which could have a determinative effect on the outcome of part of the proceedings.
Elizabeth Dwomoh, barrister, Lamb Chambers
