TC09602 - [2025] UKFTT 00930 (TC)

The first stage is to establish the length of the delay and whether it is serious and/or significant.

The direction for the Appellant to file witness evidence required compliance by 15 September 2023. Despite the Tribunal’s warning letter and the Unless Order, there was no compliance and the appeal was struck out almost three months later, on 7 December 2023. I find that this was a serious delay, which persisted despite the issuance of the Unless Order.

In R (oao Hysaj) v SSHD [2015] 1 WLR 2472 at [51] the Court of Appeal said that “significant” was to be understood “in the sense of having an effect on the proceedings”, and continued at [54]:

“Of course, the applicant may in some cases be able to satisfy the court that the delay, although substantial, has not had any practical effect on the course of the proceedings, but the longer the delay, the less likely it is that he will be able to do so…One reason for limiting the time for filing a notice of appeal is to promote finality in litigation. Parties need to know where they stand. Delay of the kind that occurred in this case undermines that objective.”

Here, the proceedings could not continue until the Tribunal and HMRC had received Mr Gill’s witness evidence, or had been told that no witness evidence would be filed. That is because the extent and nature of witness evidence affects the length of the hearing, and because the availability of any witness has to be considered when the parties provided dates to avoid. The delay was thus significant as well as serious.

There were two possible reasons for the delay: Mr Gill’s health conditions and TMS’s failures to reply to the directions and other correspondence from the Tribunal.