[2024] UKUT 69 (LC)

The FTT recorded the tenants’ account of the letting at paragraph 31, as follows:

“The applicants provided a copy of an assured shorthold tenancy agreement prepared by Empire Lettings London naming Mr Shah as landlord and listing the six appellants as tenants. They state this was not the final agreement as it contained a number of mistakes including spelling the address incorrectly and showing the wrong rent. They say a replacement agreement was signed by them and on behalf of the landlord but a copy was not provided. The three applicants named on the landlord’s version of the tenancy agreement all deny having signed that document.”

At paragraph 33 the FTT stated that, having heard the witnesses and considered the documentary evidence, it “preferred the evidence of the tenants as to the circumstances surrounding the letting”. It explained that this conclusion was supported by the email of 23 July 2020 to the letting agent listing the names and contact details of all six proposed tenants. The FTT found:

“The agency having met all six applicants could not have been under any illusion that they were from the same family.”

The FTT also refused to accept Mr Shah’s case that he only became aware that there were six tenants at the property when he received the rent repayment application in August or September 2021 and saw that Miss McLaughlin had sent an email to Provident Management on 5 February 2021 stating that there were six tenants in the house and on the tenancy agreement. The FTT went on at paragraph 35:

“The Tribunal does not find it credible that a landlord would let a property at a rent of £2,500 per month without having details of the prospective tenants, or their financial situation and would have accepted being sent only the first and last pages of a tenancy agreement.”

On that basis the FTT said it was satisfied that the tenancy was a letting to six tenants who were not related. The property therefore met the standard text for an HMO and required a mandatory licence under Part 2 of the 2004 Act.

The FTT then considered the identity of the landlord. It repeated that it preferred the version of events provided by the tenants, by which Mr Shah was the landlord notwithstanding the fact that after October the rent was paid to TSMB Ltd. It said that it did not find it strange that “the rent could be paid through Mr Shah’s captive company of which he is the sole shareholder and director as his agent.” It concluded at paragraph 45:

“The landlord named on the tenancy agreement is Mr Shah and he is therefore the relevant landlord for the purposes of the rent repayment order.”

The FTT did not find it necessary to make any findings on the circumstances under which the alternative two-page agreement naming three of the tenants and identifying the company as landlord had come into existence, nor whether or by whom it had been signed.