House for Homes Limited v London Borough of Waltham Forest

This is an appeal from the First-tier Tribunal’s decision to strike out the appellant’s appeal against a financial penalty imposed by the local housing authority, the London Borough Of Waltham Forest (“Waltham Forest”), for operating a house without the licence required under Part 3 of the Housing Act 2004. The appeal to the FTT was made one month out of time, and the FTT refused to exercise its discretion to extend time in the appellant’s favour. The appeal is brought with permission from this Tribunal, and has been decided under the written representations procedure. The appellant’s case has been presented by its director Mr Marjan Keqaj; Waltham Forest has chosen not to take part in the appeal.

Section 249A of the Housing Act 2004 provides:

“(1)

The local housing authority may impose a financial penalty on a person if satisfied, beyond reasonable doubt, that the person's conduct amounts to a relevant housing offence in respect of premises in England.”

One of those offences is the offence under section 95 of the 2004 Act which creates the offence of being the landlord of a house that is required to be licensed under a selective licensing scheme under Part 3 of the 2004 Act and is not licensed.

The procedure by which such a penalty may be imposed is set out in Schedule 13A to the 2004 Act. In outline it requires, first, that a Notice of Intent be sent to the alleged offender, giving them 28 days in which to make representations. After the 28 days the local housing authority may serve a Final Notice imposing a penalty requiring payment within 28 days and setting out prescribed information including the right to appeal to the FTT.

Paragraph 10 of Schedule 13A makes provision about the right to appeal to the FTT. It does not prescribe a time in which an appeal must be brought; but rule 27(2) of the Tribunal Procedure (First-tier Tribunal) (Property Chamber) 2010 states that it is to be brought within 28 days after the Final Notice was sent. Rule 6(3)(a) of the 2010 rules gives the FTT a discretion to extend time.

As to the facts in this case, Mr Keqaj says that he received a letter addressed to the appellant on 19 November 2024 from Waltham Forest, informing him that the appellant’s property at 11A Winchester Road, London E17 was required by the Housing Act 2004 to be licensed as a house in multiple occupation. Previous communications from Waltham Forest had not been received because they had been sent to the wrong address. He applied for a licence on 21 November 2025, and has supplied a copy of Waltham Forest’s acknowledgement.

Mr Keqaj says that he heard nothing more from Waltham Forest until 25 March 2025 when he received a Final Notice of a financial penalty of £15,600.

The notice informed the appellant that it could appeal the penalty to the FTT within 28 days. Mr Keqaj wrote to Waltham Forest on 26 March 2025, the day after he received the notice, seeking to appeal the penalty. He says that he failed to appreciate that he should appeal to the FTT. An officer of Waltham Forest replied on 26 March 2025:

“I can confirm receipt of your representation received on 26 March 2025. This will be passed to another manager to review and respond in due course.  After reviewing the case, the manager will decide either to impose the penalty, or uphold your representation. Once a decision has been made you will receive a written response.”

On 8 May 2025 Waltham Forest sent a response headed “Notice of Intent to Issue a Financial Penalty” explaining why it was not minded to cancel the penalty and saying “The Final Decision Notices will be issued shortly”.

Mr Keqaj submitted the appeal to the FTT on 22 May 2025. 28 days after the date of the Final Notice was 22 April so the appeal was 30 days late. However, the documents he has supplied in the appeal include a copy of an email he sent to the FTT on 8 May 2025, attaching the representations he had sent to Waltham Forest on 26 March.

It was not until October 2025 that the FTT gave directions for the appellant to explain why its appeal was submitted late; in response to those directions Mr Keqaj provided his correspondence with Waltham Forest and explained that he had misunderstood the procedure.

In its decision the FTT set out the dates of the Final Notice, of the appellant’s letter to Waltham Forest on 26 March 2025, filing of the appeal in the FTT. It said:

“7.

The Applicant has provided reasons for not submitting the appeal within the prescribed period. In summary, he submits the Respondent has sent correspondence to the subject property and to Philips Accountants Ltd 286b Chase Road, N14 6HF. However, neither the occupiers of the subject property not the accountants have forwarded the correspondence to him, which has caused him difficulty managing the process in a timely manner.

8.

The Respondent submits that it is the Applicant’s responsibility to ensure that the local authority has the correct address, and that it made reasonable enquiries to identify the Applicant’s address, using the addresses obtained through those investigations.

9.

However, those issues are not directly relevant to the application before the Tribunal. The Applicant confirms that he received the notice dated 24th March 2025. This is supported by his attempted appeal to the Respondent on 26 March 2025. Accordingly, irrespective of which address the Respondent used, the Applicant was in a position to submit a valid appeal to the First-tier Tribunal within time. Instead, he erroneously submitted his appeal to the local authority. …

12.

In this case, I am not satisfied that the reasons given by the Applicant either explain why the appeal was submitted out of time or provide a justification for exercising the Tribunal’s discretion to extend the period for appealing.

13.

Accordingly, as the appeal was submitted out of time and the period for appealing has not been extended, the Tribunal does not have jurisdiction to deal with the appeal. The appeal is therefore struck out.”

The appellant has permission to appeal, granted by this Tribunal on the following ground:

“The proposed appeal is arguable and has a realistic prospect of success. In particular, it is not apparent from the decision of the FTT that is gave any consideration to the length of the delay, the seriousness of the consequences, and the overall circumstances of the case, including the action taken by the applicant when he became aware of the financial penalty.”

As I said above, Waltham Forest has chosen not to take part in the appeal so I have no representations from it.

I am mindful of the limited extent to which it is permissible for the Tribunal to interfere with a discretionary decision made by the FTT. In the Deputy President referred to the explanation of the limits of the Tribunal’s role given by Lord Neuberger PSC in BPP Holdings Limited v Commissioner for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs [2017] UKSC 55 at paragraph 33:

“However, the [decision in question] is very much one for the tribunal making that decision, and an appellate Judge should only interfere where the decision is not merely different from that which the appellate Judge would have made, but is a decision which the appellate Judge considers cannot be justified.  In the words of Lawrence Collins LJ in Walbrook Trustee (Jersey) Ltd v Fattal [2008] EWCA Civ 427 at  para 33:

‘An appellate Judge should not interfere with case management decisions by a Judge who has applied the correct principles and who has taken into account matters that should be taken into account and left out of account matters which are irrelevant, unless the court is satisfied that the decision is so plainly wrong that it must be regarded as outside the generous ambit of the discretion entrusted to the Judge.”

In other words, before they can interfere, appellate Judges must not merely disagree with the decision.  They must consider that it is unjustifiable”.

In its grant of permission to appeal the Tribunal suggested that the FTT’s discretionary decision in this case might be unjustifiable because it failed to take relevant matters into account.

In my judgment that is certainly the case. The FTT’s decision considered only whether Mr Keqaj had provided a proper reason for the delay. It concluded that he had not, because although Waltham Forest had been using an incorrect address in the past the Final Notice reached Mr Keqaj at the correct address; past issues about the address were not relevant.

Pausing there, the FTT did not consider the other part of Mr Keqaj’s explanation which is that he got the procedure wrong; he wrote in error to Waltham Forest when he should have come straight to the FTT. The FTT may not have regarded that as a good explanation, but it was the reason why the appeal was late. The FTT took no account of the fact that Mr Keqaj did respond immediately to the notice, albeit to Waltham Forest instead of to the FTT. The FTT took no account of the fact that the delay was very short – 30 days to the filing of the appeal documents on 22 May 2025, but only 16 days to the date of Mr Keqaj’s letter to the FTT on 8 May 2025 – and would have had no effect on the ability of Waltham Forest to respond to the appeal. Nor did the FTT take into account the level of the penalty, and whether in light of that it was proportionate to strike out the appeal.

Furthermore, I do not think that the failure of Waltham Forest to use Mr Keqaj’s correct address before it sent the Final Notice was irrelevant. What strikes me looking at the correspondence that the appellant has sent to the Tribunal is that there is no copy of a Notice of Intent. Whether one was sent I do not know. But Mr Keqaj’s response to the Final Notice would have been entirely correct had the notice he received been a Notice of Intent; and Waltham Forest’s response on 8 May 2025 (see paragraph 8 above) indicates that it thought Mr Keqaj had responded to a Notice of Intent. So there appears to be some confusion about procedure, which may go some way to explain Mr Keqaj’s response to the notice he received. More importantly, it is not clear that a Notice of Intent was in fact sent to the appellant, which would be another good reason not to strike out the appeal.

Those were all relevant considerations that the FTT ignored, and for that reason in my judgment its decision was unjustifiable. I set it aside, and in light of all the factors I have set out in paragraphs 18 and 19 above I substitute the Tribunal’s decision that the appeal is admitted in the FTT.

The appeal to the Tribunal from the striking out of the appeal in the FTT succeeds; the appeal in the FTT against the financial penalty will now proceed and the appellant should apply to the FTT for directions.