[2025] UKUT 264 (LC)

By s. 263(3)(a) of the Housing Act 2004, “person managing” means, in relation to premises, the person who, being an owner or lessee of the premises, would so receive those rents or other payments but for having entered into an arrangement (whether in pursuance of a court order or otherwise) with another person who is not an owner or lessee of the premises by virtue of which that other person receives the rents or other payments.

On that basis, for the local authority to be the person managing the property (so that no offence was committed) it would have to be an owner of the premises (which it was), and it would have had to have entered into an arrangement with another person who was not an owner or lessee of the premises (which it did). The agreement with GGM was not one by virtue of which GGM received the rents or other payments from the occupying guardians. In particular, the agreement itself did not provide for GGM to receive the rents or other payments from the occupying guardians. It said nothing about that. It was the appellant which received the rents or other payments from the occupiers, but not by virtue of the agreement between the local housing authority and GGM.

The appellant therefore argues that the ‘arrangement’ must be taken to include all of the agreements, understandings and practices that made it possible to allow paying guardians to occupy the property for security, since that was the object of the exercise.

Plainly the category of arrangements is potentially wide, and wider than that of contractual agreements. I did not understand the respondents to argue otherwise. But there are additional requirements. The arrangement must be made by the local authority and with some other person. That other person must not be an owner or lessee of the property, but must receive the rents or other payments from occupiers. It may do so directly or through an agent or trustee. But it must do so by virtue of that arrangement. And it must be the case that the owner or lessee of the premises would receive those rents or other payments (whether directly or through an agent or trustee) but for having entered into that arrangement.

The FTT needed to consider whether the arrangement between the owner or lessee, on the one hand, and the person who receives the rents or other payments, on the other, had those features. The appellant’s proposition that the arrangement must be taken to include all of the agreements, understandings and practices making it possible to achieve the commercial objective (in this case, allowing paying guardians to occupy the property) is plainly too broadly expressed, therefore, and I reject it.