Case Reference: FT/SL/2025/0003
Standards & Licensing
Heard by Cloud Video Platform
Before
JUDGE A. MARKS CBE
Between
RENNIE & PARTNERS LTD
Appellant
and
LONDON BOROUGH OF BARNET
Respondent
Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr Ian Rennie
For the Respondent: Ms Sayjel Patel
Decision: The appeal is allowed. The Final Notice is quashed and likewise the penalty it imposed.
MODE OF HEARING
1. The Tribunal held an oral hearing of this matter because it must hold a hearing unless each party has consented to the matter being determined without a hearing and the Tribunal is satisfied that it can properly determine the issues without a hearing (see rule 32 of The Tribunal Procedure (First-tier Tribunal) (General Regulatory Chamber) Rules 2009 (as amended) (“the Rules”).
2. In this case, the appellant requested an oral hearing and therefore did not consent to the matter being determined without a hearing.
3. At the hearing - which took place on 23 February 2026 - the Tribunal sought oral evidence and submissions from the Respondent on a preliminary issue which would be potentially determinative of the appeal. The Appellant did give any oral evidence nor make any oral submissions.
THE APPEAL
Background
4. The appellant, Rennie & Partners Limited (“R&P”) is a letting agent. The respondent (“the Council”) is the enforcement authority which served a Final Notice on R&P on 22 November 2024.
5. The Notice imposed a financial penalty of £2000 for R&P's breach of the requirement to publish on its website a copy of its certificate of membership of an approved or designated client money protection scheme.
6. On 11 February 2025, R&P appealed to this Tribunal, challenging the Council’s decision to impose a penalty, and the amount of the penalty.
The Legal Framework
7. The Client Money Protection Schemes for Property Agents (Requirements to Belong to a Scheme etc.) Regulations 2019 (“the Regulations”) came into force on 1 April 2019.
Membership requirement
8. Regulation 3 provides that a property agent who holds client money must be a member of an approved or designated client money protection scheme (“CMPS”).
Transparency requirements
9. Under Regulation 4, if the scheme administrator of a CMPS provides a property agent with a certificate of membership, that property agent must - amongst other things - publish a copy of the certificate on its website (if any).
Enforcement
10. Under Regulation 5, it is the duty of every local authority to enforce the requirements of Regulations 3 and 4 in its area.
Financial Penalty
11. Under Regulation 7, where a local authority is satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that a property agent has breached Regulation 4, the authority may impose a financial penalty of such amount not exceeding £5,000 as the authority determines.
Procedure for imposing financial penalties
12. The Schedule to the Regulations sets out the procedure for imposing financial penalties.
13. The authority, before imposing a financial penalty, must serve notice on the property agent of its intention to do so (paragraph 1). The property agent has the right to make written representations within 28 days of service of the notice of intent (paragraph 2).
14. Under paragraph 3, the authority can decide whether to impose a financial penalty and, if so, the amount of the penalty. If the authority decides to impose a financial penalty, it must serve a final notice imposing that penalty. The final notice must contain various information as set out in paragraph 3(4), including by paragraph (c) information about how to pay the penalty.
Appeals against financial penalties
15. Paragraph 5 of the Schedule sets out the procedure for appeals against financial penalties.
16. A property agent on whom a final notice has been served may, within 28 days of service of the notice, appeal to the First-tier Tribunal against the decision to impose the penalty or the amount of the penalty.
17. An appeal is by way of a re-hearing of the local authority’s decision but may be determined having regard to matters of which the authority was unaware.
18. The Tribunal may quash, confirm or vary the final notice but may not impose a financial penalty of more than £5,000 in respect of a breach of Regulation 4.
Findings of fact
19. On the basis of the written materials in the case bundle the following findings of fact are all undisputed:
a. R&P was at all relevant times a property agent within the scope of the Regulations.
b. On 17 September 2024 when the Council inspected R&P's website, R&P was a member of a CMPS and a certificate of CMPS membership had been provided to R&P: however, no copy of that certificate was published on R&P's website.
c. On 20 September 2024, the Council issued a Notice of Intent ("NoI") to R&P's premises at 26 High Road London N2 9PJ.
d. The NoI stated the Council's intention to impose under Regulation 7 a financial penalty of £5000 for R&P's breach of Regulation 4.
e. Having received R&P's written representations in response to the NoI and taken those representations into account, the Council reduced the penalty to £2000 in its Final Notice (FN) dated 22 November 2024.
f. Apart from this, since R&P's establishment of its business in Barnet in 1978, it has not had any complaints from the Council about its operations in the borough.
g. Mr Rennie had no intention of breaching the Regulations and was unaware that R&P's’ website was non-compliant until receipt of the NoI.
h. Mr Rennie responded promptly to the NoI and very shortly afterwards rectified the error on R&P's website.
i. Mr Rennie challenged the FN and the penalty it imposed on various grounds. He was not legally represented and did not allege that the FN itself was defective.
Preliminary issue - evidence and submissions
20. The FN was dated 22 November 2024. It was sent to R&P under cover of a letter dated 20 September 2024. The Council accepted that the cover letter's date was incorrect.
21. Karl Schultz, Trading Standards Officer for the Council who attended the hearing as a witness, affirmed Ms Patel's explanation that the author of the letter had apparently copied and pasted the top part of an earlier covering letter to R&P (for the NoI dated 20 September 2024) and had failed to change the date. I accepted this explanation on the basis that the top part of both letters contained the identical spelling error in the author's name as the "Contact", a surprising error for the author to make once, let alone twice.
22. It was evident that neither letter had been produced on the Council's headed notepaper. Mr Schultz's explanation for this was that the author (who was the same for both letters) was a Trading Standard's Officer dealing with the matter as a locum engaged by the Council. That Officer no longer works for the Council but while they did, worked exclusively from home and did not have access to the Council's headed paper.
23. Ms Patel submitted that while the Officer should have used the Council's template, the errors in the covering letters did not nullify the NoI and FN sent to R&P. However, Ms Patel accepted that the errors in the letters and the absence of headed paper gave at best an impression of informality which, as Mr Rennie said in his written materials, he had at first thought indicative of a scam.
24. Turning to the FN itself, Ms Patel accepted that she had not examined it closely. She accepted, when pointed out, that the FN included at the end a copy of Regulation 6 which refers to the maximum penalty of £30,000 that can be imposed for breach of Regulation 3 (not being a member of a CMPS).
25. As R&P was not in breach of Regulation 3 nor liable to a maximum penalty of £30,000 but instead in breach of Regulation 4 for which the maximum penalty under Regulation 7 is £5000, Ms Patel accepted that inclusion in the FN of the wording of Regulation 6 and reference to a maximum penalty of £30,000 was "confusing".
26. As for the remainder of the FN, it contained the prescribed information set out in the Schedule to the Regulations, paragraph 3(4)(a), (b), (d), (e) and (f). In respect of the mandatory requirement in paragraph 3(4)(c) to set out "information about how to pay the penalty" the FN stated:
"HOW THE PENALTY MAY BE PAID
Please quote the following reference number when making payment Uniform Reference
To be paid to: London Borough of Barnet Trading Standards
By telephone: 0208 359 7443"
27. No reference number was stated after the words "Uniform Reference"; no address for London Borough of Barnet Trading Standards was given (the FN's covering letter was from the Council's "Assurance and Public Protection" directorate for which an address was stated); no Trading Standards or Council bank details were set out to enable payment online; nor was any indication given of what methods of payment would (and would not) be acceptable.
28. In respect of the absence of any postal address, Mr Schultz explained that "Assurance & Public Protection" is the directorate which Trading Standards operate under, and "we are restricted to put assurance and public protection by [the] Senior Management Team." It was not explained why, in that case, the FN did not state the payee as "Assurance & Public Protection" or at least set out a postal address for the Council's Trading Standards "c/o" that directorate.
29. As for the telephone number stated in the FN, Mr Schultz explained that by telephoning that number - albeit leading to a recorded message - the caller would, by waiting, be connected to a contact centre. He went on to say that the caller could then "explain the matter and any reference number (if applicable)". He said that payment could be made by card or payment plan though "usually a discussion will take place in advance of payment if a payment plan is required". He said that payment by cheque was not proposed and "historically BACS payment wasn't accepted but it is now."
30. Mr Schultz submitted that the Council's understanding of the formal requirements of paragraph 3(4) of the Schedule to the Regulations was that "as long as there was a method of payment, regardless of whether it was restrictive, [it] was compliant".
31. Ms Patel suggested that as local authorities are "not doing this work 'day in day out'" perhaps the FN was created "without legal input". She stated that Trading Standards is not set up to receive payments with the frequency of, say, parking fines. She accepted that mistakes had been made in the FN and its covering letter. She further submitted that the reference quoted in the covering letter could have been used by the recipient given the omission of a meaningful reference number in the FN itself. However, she accepted that the information prescribed in paragraph 3(4) must be included in the notice itself.
32. In short, Ms Patel accepted that in the FN "the information was not as clear as it should be."
Decision on preliminary issue
I consider the covering letters' lack of formal letter-head, apparent departure from the Council template, spelling mistakes, and in the case of the FN covering letter incorrect date, as well as the FN attaching an extract of an inapplicable Regulation - while not major errors even collectively - are not only "confusing" for the recipient but also indicative of a general lack of precision and professionalism on the part of the Council in applying the Regulations. This ill-befits a local authority tasked with enforcing the very same Regulations (albeit different provisions) against local businesses.
I note the Council's explanation that its relatively rare exercise of the Regulations' enforcement powers means it is not well "set up" to deal with such cases but I do not regard that as an acceptable excuse for failing to meet the procedural requirements specified in the Schedule to the Regulations.
I accept the Council's submission that paragraph 3(4)(c) of that Schedule does not prescribe the exact detail that must be included within the "information about how to pay the penalty". However, in this case, I consider that the payment information actually included in the FN was at best incomplete - because it clearly intended to state a reference number but did not - and at worst failed to give information about "how" to pay the penalty, merely providing a telephone number to call in order to find out how (e.g. by what methods) payment could be made.
I also accept that the deficiencies in information in the FN itself could, in this case, with a little extra effort and inquiry on the part of the recipient, have been discovered. However, I consider that is beside the point. Requiring the recipient of a notice to look elsewhere - such as a covering letter to find the relevant reference or guess at the relevant address for the payee, or by telephoning the local authority to speak to someone at their contact centre to find out how to pay - in my view derogates from the statutory design of paragraph 3(4).
In my judgment, the purpose of paragraph 3(4)'s list of requirements that "must" be set out in the final notice is intended to ensure that a final notice is a self-contained document which provides the recipient with all the information they need in order to understand the amount of the penalty; why it has been imposed; how to pay it and by when; how to appeal; and the consequences of failing to comply.
Crucially in this case, in my judgment, the FN did not contain even - to paraphrase Mr Schultz's words - a "restrictive" method of payment. Instead, it stated a general Council telephone which leads to a recorded message giving a series of options to various Council services, none of which is related to penalty payments under the Regulation. Had the recipient been patient enough to wait till the end of the recording and speak to someone at the Council's Contact Centre, at best (had they been able to provide a reference - which was not stated in the FN itself but only in the wrongly dated covering letter - or other identifying information) they would presumably have been given details about how to pay.
In my view, this is insufficient to meet the requirement in the Schedule to the Regulations paragraph 3(4), sub-paragraph (c) that the final notice must set out "information about how to pay the penalty".
CONCLUSION
As a result of my finding that the FN falls short of the full requirements set out in paragraph 3(4) of the Schedule to the Regulations, I consider the FN is defective. I therefore quash it and the penalty it imposes.
As my conclusion on this preliminary issue disposes of the appeal in this case, I did not go on to determine the parties' other evidence, arguments and submissions.
Signed:
Judge A. Marks CBE Dated: 11 March 2026