[2023] UKUT 118 (LC)

The appellant has been a landlord in Bristol for more than 30 years and owns a portfolio of 29 properties held for residential letting. She has specialised in letting to tenants who might otherwise find it difficult to obtain private rented accommodation, including homeless, vulnerable or marginalised individuals. It has been her case, which I have no reason to doubt, that her motivation in letting property has been humanitarian rather than commercial.

18 of the appellant’s properties are required to be licensed as HMOs under Part 2 of the Housing Act 2004 (the 2004 Act). The local housing authority responsible for licensing is the respondent, Bristol City Council (the Council). Many of the appellant’s properties became subject to licensing for the first time in July 2019 when new areas of the City were designated by the Council as being subject to additional licensing.

For a number of years the Council has been concerned about the quality of the appellant’s management of her portfolio. At a meeting in September 2016 Council officers explained those concerns to the appellant and obtained a promise from her that she would improve the standards of her properties. That promise, and subsequent assurances, were found by the FTT not to have been kept. In particular, in order to avoid the revocation of her HMO licence the appellant had proposed that she should hand over management responsibility to a professional managing agent, Bristol Property Partnership (BPP), but on 1 September 2021 BPP informed the Council that it was discontinuing its relationship with her.

The Council’s concerns led it to take progressively more serious enforcement action against the appellant in 2020 and 2021. The imposition of a financial penalty for licensing offences was followed by the service of notices of intention to refuse or revoke the appellant’s HMO licences and then by successful prosecutions for management and licensing offences.

On 19 April 2021 the appellant pleaded guilty and was convicted of a total of eight charges in relation to three of her properties. All eight convictions were for banning order offences and all but one involved contravention of the Management of Houses in Multiple Occupation (England) Regulations 2006 (the HMO Management Regulations).

Two of the offences of which the appellant was convicted related to the absence of fire doors between kitchens and living space and most of the others related to individual items of disrepair or poor standards of maintenance or cleanliness. The sole licensing offence concerned a failure to comply with a licence condition requiring a bathroom to be fitted with an extractor fan. The sanctions imposed by the magistrates were fines of £2,000 each in respect of two of the offences and of £3,000 each in respect of the remaining six offences, giving a total of £22,000; the appellant was additionally ordered to pay £7,400 towards the Council’s costs.

In its evidence to the FTT, the Council acknowledged that, viewed individually, the offences of which the appellant had been convicted were “not of the most serious type of breaches in terms of potential harm” but maintained that they nevertheless gave rise to the potential for harm to the occupiers and were part of “a consistent pattern of poor management over an extended period of time.”

On 29 September 2021, shortly after it had been informed that BPP was no longer involved in managing her properties, the Council gave the appellant notice that it intended to apply for a banning order for a period of 10 years. The Council explained its reasons and invited the appellant to make representations in response, which she did. The FTT found that those representations were considered by a number of Council officers before a report was prepared by Mr Riddell, the senior environmental officer in its private housing team. In the report Mr Riddell set out the history of the Council’s dealings with the appellant, commented on her representations and explained his reasons for recommending that a banning order be applied for. That recommendation was then considered and approved by Mr Mallinson, the Council’s private housing manager.

On 13 January 2022 the Council applied to the FTT for a banning order, relying on the eight convictions secured nine months earlier.

The Council’s application was heard on 31 March 2022 and the FTT issued a preliminary decision on 6 June in which it concluded that a banning order was both necessary and proportionate to ensure that the appellant’s property portfolio was managed to an appropriate standard. At a further hearing on 11 July it considered argument on the terms of the order before issuing a second decision on 9 August together with an order banning the appellant for a period of five years from letting housing or engaging in letting agency or property management work (or from being involved in any company carrying out those activities). The order stated that the ban on letting houses was not to come into force for six months in the case of existing tenancies and gave the appellant permission to apply for further directions if she was unable to bring any such tenancy to an end within that period. The ban in respect of existing tenancies, but not new tenancies, was suspended by this Tribunal while the appeal was pending.