[2024] UKUT 81 (LC)

The appellants appealed, with permission from this Tribunal, on six grounds. The first two related to findings of fact and the FTT’s assessment of the credibility of one of the witnesses; they were wisely not pursued at the hearing.

Grounds 3 and 4 challenge the FTT’s decision on admission or agreement; it is said that the FTT was wrong to find that the appellants (or rather the second and third appellants, in view of the date of the first appellant’s purchase) had admitted the service charges for 2012-16, and that the FTT had failed to give reasons why the lack of a balancing payment calculation was not material to that finding.

Grounds 5 and 6 relate to estoppel by convention; Ms Gourlay argued that it is not possible for an estoppel to undermine the provisions of the 2002 Act, and that in any event the FTT wrongly found that there was an estoppel by convention because (among other points) its finding that the appellants’ conduct influenced the respondent was contrary to the evidence.

I am going to look at those two pairs of grounds together, first at the admission or agreement point and then at estoppel by convention.