[2025] UKUT 233 (LC)

The four appellants were tenants of the respondent at Flat 1, 35 Reighton Road (the Property) from March 2021 until May 2023. The Property was an HMO throughout the period of their occupation, and it was required to be licensed by an additional licensing scheme introduced by the London Borough of Hackney, which ran from October 2018 to September 2023.

The respondent did not have a licence when it let the Property in March 2021 and first tried to obtain one on 16 November 2022, when its agent completed the online application on Hackney’s licensing portal but was unable to pay the required fee because of a fault with the payment system. When the agent contacted Hackney on 16 November, he was informed by email that the payment system was down and that he would be contacted when it was back up and running. The agent was not contacted by Hackney, but when he made further enquiries on 5 December, he was informed on 8 December that the system was functioning again and that payments could be received. The agent then arranged payment of the fee, which was completed on 15 December. Hackney subsequently acknowledged that, but for the fault with their system, the licence application would have been made on 16 November 2022.

On 29 November 2023 the appellants applied to the FTT for a rent repayment order, seeking to recover all of the £27,028 which they had paid in rent for the period from 16 December 2021 to 15 December 2022. In answer to the application the respondent said that it had a reasonable excuse for being in control of the HMO without a licence between 16 November and 15 December 2022 because it had done all that it reasonably could to apply for a licence during that period and had only been unable to do so because of Hackney’s defective payment system.