[2024] UKUT 69 (LC)

I can take this ground of appeal very shortly. Once it is accepted that the letting was between Mr Shah and the six tenants and that a tenancy agreement was signed by him or on his behalf, the suggestion that Mr Shah was deceived by his own letting agents is impossible to accept. The FTT specifically ruled out any wrongdoing on the part of the tenants and based it conclusion that there was no reasonable excuse for the offence on the improbability of Mr Shah’s account and on the absence of evidence of the instructions to Empire Lettings or reports from them or of any other correspondence between either of the appellants and the letting agent. Without evidence to disprove the natural assumption that the agent was acting in accordance with its instructions, the suggestion that Mr Shah was duped was simply unsubstantiated. If the email exchanges between the tenants and Provident management in February 2021 are to be taken at face value, the new managing agent does appear to have been unaware of the number of tenants living in the property. But there was no evidence about what Provident Management was told by Mr Shah and no reason to assume that Mr Shah was as surprised by the facts as they appear to have been. The FTT was entitled to dismiss Mr Shah’s defence because he failed to satisfy it that he did not know exactly what was going on.