[2025] UKUT 320 (LC)

The respondents requested an extension of time to enable them to proceed with their applications for costs. The appellants submitted lengthy and detailed submissions why no extension should be allowed. These included, on the one hand, a complaint that the applications themselves were being conducted in a piecemeal and disproportionate manner, and on the other, a complaint that formal applications for an extension of time had not been filed supported by witness statements and application fees and the respondents, many of whom act in person, had not sufficiently engaged with the criteria applicable to proceedings governed by the CPR (which these are not). The contradictory arguments on which the appellant relied did not include any submission that the Tribunal lacked power to extend time.

As Mr Dovar pointed out, the 14 days permitted in rule 10(10), is not a period provided for by primary legislation), nor is it the same period as is provided for costs applications to the rest of the Upper Tribunal (but not the Lands Chamber) by the Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rule 2008, where a month is allowed, or by rule 13(5) of the FTT Rules, where the relevant period is 28 days.

Rule 5 (3) of the Rules provides that the Tribunal may extend time for complying with any rule or practice direction, including after the time limit has expired. By rule 7, a failure to comply with a rule does not of itself render the step taken void and the Tribunal may take such action as it considers just, including waiving the requirement. It is clear, therefore, that the Tribunal has power to extend time for the making of an application under rule 10(10). In exercising that power the substantive merits of the application are irrelevant.

Time expired on 1 May, and the applications were made on 9 May. An extension of eight days is therefore required.

I reject the appellants’ submission that a breach of any deadline is “obviously serious”. The relevant procedural rules are the Tribunal’s own Rules, not the CPR by reference to which the appellants made their submissions. The Tribunal’s overriding objective of dealing with cases fairly and justly includes avoiding unnecessary formality (rule 2(2)(b)). The Tribunal’s Rules do not require any particular formality in the making of procedural applications, and do not require that applications be supported by witness statements (rule 6(2)).

I am satisfied that the delay in this case was trivial. It has caused no prejudice to the appellants or to the progression of the appeal, which is already at an end.

The need for a convincing or meritorious explanation of the delay is proportionate to its seriousness. I have no reason to doubt that the delay occurred in the case of the second respondent for the reason given by its solicitors, namely, that it was assumed that the time limit was longer, as it would have been in the FTT or in other Upper Tribunal Chambers. That was an easy enough mistake to make with an application rarely made in this Tribunal. The third respondent’s solicitors have said only that the delay was caused by “an oversight”; they may have shared the assumption made by the second respondent’s solicitors. No explanation for the delay has been offered by the first respondents, who are unrepresented (although they brief counsel directly for tribunal hearings); it is possible that they did not know that there was any time limit, or what it might be, which would have been understandable as the Tribunal does not notify parties of it. In any event, the eight-day period of delay was short. Six of the fourteen days after the decision was sent were either bank holidays or fell on weekends. A further bank holiday and a weekend fell in the eight days ending on the date of the application and for which the extension is required.

There is nothing in the general circumstances of the proceedings which discourages me from granting the required extension of time, which I now do.