Leasehold valuation tribunal — Appeal — Judicial review — Service charge — Leasehold valuation tribunal disallowing part of claimant’s costs — Refusal of leave to appeal decision — Whether court having jurisdiction to hear application for judicial review against refusal — Application dismissed
The claimant was the landlord of a four storey house that had been converted into six flats. In 2002, the lessees of two of the flats challenged the claimant’s service charge expenditure under section 19(2A) of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 (as amended by the Housing Act 1996). A leasehold valuation tribunal (LVT) disallowed a number of the claimant’s costs including, in particular, the cost of certain damp-proofing works.
The claimant’s application for permission to appeal was refused by both the LVT and the Lands Tribunal. It subsequently requested permission to apply for judicial review of the tribunal’s decision. It asserted that no alternative remedy was available to it since there was clear authority, albeit related to appeals from other tribunals, that a refusal of permission to appeal by the Lands Tribunal was not a decision, within the meaning of section 3(4) of the Lands Tribunal Act 1949, that provided for the right to appeal. It further submitted that no reasonable tribunal would have refused permission to appeal.
Held: The application was dismissed.
Permission to appeal to the Lands Tribunal from a decision of an LVT was not normally required. However, section 31A(6) of the 1985 Act provided that no such appeal should lie to the Lands Tribunal under that Act without the leave either of the LVT in question or the Lands Tribunal.
Parliament had clearly intended that section 31A(6) should act as a brake on a proliferation of appeals from LVT decisions relating to service charges. This would be rendered abortive if there was a right to appeal to the Court of Appeal, under section 3(4) of the 1949 Act, against a refusal of permission by the Lands Tribunal.
The administrative court undoubtedly had power judicially to review decisions of the Lands Tribunal to refuse or grant permission to appeal under section 31A(6). However, that power should only be exercised in exceptional circumstances, and those were not present in the instant case: R (on the application of Sivasubramaniam) v Wandsworth County Court [2002] EWCA Civ 1738; [2003] 1 WLR 475 applied.
It was plain that the claimant was seeking permission to reargue the merits of the LVT’s decision, and the criticisms of that decision raised a mix of factual, legal and valuation issues. These were precisely the kind of issues that parliament wished to be dealt with in a non-legalistic way and left to the good sense of LVTs under the expert supervision of the Lands Tribunal. Parliament had decided that the Lands Tribunal, not the courts, should determine whether the claimant should be permitted to appeal from LVTs decisions. Granting the landlord’s claim for judicial review would subvert the statutory scheme and frustrate parliament’s intention.
Paul St J Letman (instructed by P Chevalier & Co) appeared for the claimant; the defendant did not appear and was not represented.
Eileen O’Grady, barrister
