[2024] UKUT 17 (LC)

Part 2 of the Housing Act 2004 provides that certain houses in multiple occupation (“HMOs”) have to be licensed, and section 72 of the 2004 Act provides that it is an offence to manage or be in control of an HMO that is required to be licensed and is not licensed. That offence is one of those specified in section 40 of the Housing and Planning Act 2016, which means that the FTT may make a rent repayment order in favour of a tenant against a landlord if it is satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the offence has been committed during the period of one year before the tenant’s application.

The property in question in this appeal is 14 Bassett Road, London W10, described by the FTT as a “large rambling London townhouse”. It is Mr Barker’s home and his mother’s, where she has lived since 1980, and it contains four rooms which are rented out to individuals. Ms Shokar rented a room in the house from August 2020 to February 2022. Later she applied to the FTT for a rent repayment order on the ground that the house was required to be licensed as an HMO under the Housing Act 2004 and had not been.

The house was described by both parties to the FTT as follows. On the ground floor to the right of the entrance is a large room which I am going to call the “Ground Floor Room” by way of neutral description, which is occupied by Mr Barker and his mother. To the left is a library, and to the rear is a kitchen. Four rooms on the first and second floor are let by Mr Barker to individual occupiers; on the first floor is a shared bathroom and on the second floor there is also a utility room and a guest bedroom. The occupiers of the four let rooms share the first floor bathroom and the ground floor kitchen. There is a self-contained flat in the basement.

Mr Barker and his mother Mrs Barker made witness statements explaining that the Ground Floor Room has its own lockable door and is a lounge with a small bathroom and kitchen area at the rear. There is a bed on the ground level for Mrs Barker and a mezzanine area which Mrs Barker described as the “second bedroom” where Mr Barker sleeps (although he said he occasionally sleeps in the library).

Before the FTT Mr Barker conceded that he was Ms Shokar’s landlord, that if the property was an HMO he was the person managing or in control of it, and that he did not have an HMO licence for the property. The FTT decided that the property was an HMO that required to be licensed, on the basis of the number of occupants in it during the relevant 12-month period which it decided was 21 February 2021 to 21 February 2022, and it made a rent repayment order against Mr Barker. Mr Barker appeals, with permission from this Tribunal, on two grounds:

To understand the appeal we have to look in more detail at the provisions of the 2004 Act.