[2025] UKUT 161 (LC)

4 Biscay Road is a large house belonging to the appellant and his wife and was their family home from 1993 to 2000. According to the appellant’s evidence to the FTT, in 2000 the family moved out and he let the house to Shepherds Bush Housing Association until 2011. By 2011 he was living in Greece and later in North Macedonia and when his arrangement with the Housing Association came to an end, he relied on the services of local agents in London to let and manage the house on his behalf.

With effect from 5 June 2017 the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham (the Council) designated the area in which the property is situated under section 56 of the 2004 Act as an area of additional licensing of HMOs.

It appears from information supplied by the Council in 2024 that someone began to complete an online application for an HMO licence on 29 June 2018, but got no further than inputting an email address and obtaining a reference number. The email address associated with the application was the appellant’s. As no details of the property were provided, no HMO licence was issued at that stage.

In July 2018 the appellant was approached by a new agency, Kingsman, with whom he entered into a detailed management agreement under which Kingsman was to let and manage the house from 16 August 2018 and was to pay the appellant a fixed monthly rent.

It was an express term of the agreement that Kingsman was immediately to apply for any licence which was required to operate the property as an HMO. The appellant agreed to pay all monthly payments due under the mortgage on the property, and by clause 2.2.2.2, he agreed “to cover all costs required for the HMO licence to be approved, if the first application is rejected due to the Mortgage terms (for the avoidance of doubt all council requests and invoices will be provided by the Manager as proof prior to payment)”. I take that obligation to mean that Kingsman was to cover the costs of an HMO licence, but that the appellant was to be responsible for those costs if a second application was necessary because the first was rejected because of the terms of the mortgage on the property.

The agreement between the appellant and Kingsman was due to last for a minimum period of 12 months and then to be terminable on six months’ notice, but by August 2019 Kingsman was in liquidation. The appellant says that when it ceased trading Kingsman owed him £17,000 in unpaid rent. Its director was later disqualified for 11 years, having been found to have taken £6.7m from its clients in four years of trading.

After the collapse of Kingsman, which occurred while the appellant was living abroad, he began managing the property himself, relying on a friend, Leslie Nurse, as his local agent and keeping in touch with his tenants using group messaging apps. During the covid pandemic the appellant was prevented from leaving North Macedonia. It was at this time, between June 2021 and March 2022, that the five respondents separately became tenants of individual rooms in the property. The relationship between the parties began to deteriorate in September 2022 and the appellant eventually gave his tenants notice to leave. Each of them did so between February and May 2023.

It is the appellant’s case that when he let rooms in the property to the respondents, he believed it had been licensed by Kingsman. He explained in his FTT witness statement why he believed that. His agreement with Kingsman had required it to obtain a licence and he said that there were signs at the property which suggested that a licence was in place, including a framed document on the wall next to the entrance which looked to him like an HMO licence. He also said that the property appeared on the Council’s online list of properties for which HMO licences had been applied for. He saw it there and discussed it with Mr Williams of the Council in November 2022. He was informed by the Council on 29 November, after he had made enquiries, that following a review, the application “has now been closed”.

On being told by the Council on 29 November 2022 that the property was not licensed and that the application on its website had now been closed, the appellant immediately applied for an HMO licence, and was granted one in his own name on 5 July 2023.