[2023] UKUT 247 (LC)

The appellant is a limited company whose business is property investment and management. It has owned and let a self-contained flat at 160C Muswell Hill Road since the 1970s. The flat has three bedrooms, and a shared kitchen, bathroom and living room.

On 29 August 2020 the flat was let by the appellant to the respondents, Mr Ramsdale, Mr Keegan and Mr Congdon, for twelve months at a monthly rent of £1,980. At the end of the year the tenancy continued but Mr Congdon moved out and was replaced by a new tenant who has not participated in the proceedings.

The FTT was satisfied that the three tenants were not a single household and that the flat was a house in multiple occupation within the meaning of section 254, Housing Act 2004.

On 12 February 2019 the local housing authority, the London Borough of Haringey, designated its whole borough as subject to an additional HMO licensing scheme under which all HMOs occupied by three or more people were required to be licensed. No licence had yet been issued to the appellant when it let the flat to the respondents in August 2020 and the licence it was eventually granted was backdated only to 10 May 2021. There is email correspondence between the appellant and Haringey in November 2020 about its efforts to make an online licence application (which the appellant says it did in May 2020).