Jama Ahmed Farrah v Sheffield City Council

This is an appeal from a decision of the First-tier Tribunal to make a banning order against the appellant Mr Jama Farrah under section 15 of the Housing and Planning Act 2016. The respondent the Sheffield City Council has chosen not to participate in the appeal. Mr Farrah has not been legally represented.

A “banning order” is defined by section 14(1) of the Housing and Planning Act 2016 as:

“(1)

… an order, made by the First-tier Tribunal, banning a person from—

(a)

letting housing in England,

(b)

engaging in English letting agency work,

(c)

engaging in English property management work, or

(d)

doing two or more of those things.”

Section 15 of the 2016 Act enables a local housing authority to apply for a banning order against a person who has been convicted of a “banning order offence”. The Schedule to the Housing and Planning Act 2016 (Banning Order Offences) Regulations 2018 lists the banning order offences, including offences under section 1(2), (3) and (3A) of the Protection from Eviction Act 1977. Section 15 of the 2016 Act sets out the requirements for notice of the authority’s intention to make the application to be given to the person against whom the order is proposed, and for him or her to be able to make representations.

Sections 16 gives the FTT a discretion to make a banning order, and prescribes a number of things the FTT must consider when deciding whether to do so:

“16.

Making a banning order

(1)

The First-tier Tribunal may make a banning order against a person who—

(a)

has been convicted of a banning order offence, and

(b)

was a residential landlord or a property agent at the time the offence was committed (but see subsection (3)).

(2)

A banning order may only be made on an application by a local housing authority in England that has complied with section 15.

…

(4)

In deciding whether to make a banning order against a person, and in deciding what order to make, the Tribunal must consider—

(a)

the seriousness of the offence of which the person has been convicted,

(b)

any previous convictions that the person has for a banning order offence,

(c)

whether the person is or has at any time been included in the database of rogue landlords and property agents, and

(d)

the likely effect of the banning order on the person and anyone else who may be affected by the order.”

Section 17 adds the following provisions:

The appellant Mr Farrah is 104 years old, and was at the date of the FTT’s decision the landlord of a number of properties in Sheffield. On On 6 March 2024 he pleaded guilty to, and was convicted of, two offences under section 1(3A) of the Protection from Eviction Act 1977, which took place between 5 December 2022 and 21 December 2022 at 33 Brunswick Street, Sheffield and involved the Mr Farrah’s tenants.

On 9 August 2024 Sheffield City Council served on Mr Farrah notice of its intention to apply for a banning order, as required in section 15. Mr Farrah made representations, there was some correspondence and discussion, and the City Council applied to the FTT for a banning order. A hearing was conducted, at which Mr Farrah accepted that he was not able to manage his properties any more but proposed to have his adult children do so for him. The FTT did not find that suggestion satisfactory. It recorded in its decision, dated 10 September 2025, that prior to the hearing it had asked for details of Mr Farrah’s properties and copies of the tenancy agreements, and names and addresses of the people living there. It set out its conclusions as follows:

“21.

The Respondent has caused two of his tenants to leave their homes as a direct result of repeated and wholly unjustified behaviour on his part, including invasion of privacy and verbal and physical aggression. The circumstances of the offences and the effect of them on the Respondent’s tenants are so serious as to justify a banning order of 5 years. The testimonials produced by the Respondent have been considered but do not affect this conclusion. The Respondent and his wife will suffer loss of rental income but this loss does not outweigh the tribunal’s decision that it is appropriate for a banning order to be imposed. …

23.

Mr Mohammed Farrah is not capable of managing rented properties in accordance with current or proposed legislation. The Respondent by his own admission is not capable of managing his rented properties.

24.

The suggestion at the hearing that four siblings would coordinate efforts to manage the let properties between them in order to maintain an income for their parents was made too late and is too uninformed a proposal to be acceptable to the tribunal.

25.

Pending recovery of possession of the let properties, the Respondent’s tenants are to be protected from further contact with him. A firm of professional managing agents is required to manage the lettings and to recover possession on behalf of the Respondent, using the services of a solicitor insofar as it is reasonable to do so.”

The FTT made the following order:

Permission to appeal was granted by this Tribunal (the Deputy Chamber President, Mr Martin Rodger KC), not on the ground argued by Mr Farrah, but for the following reason:

“The order made by the FTT requires the applicant to terminate the tenancies of 13 tenants in four properties on the earliest possible date. It is for consideration whether the FTT has power to make an order in those terms and, if it does have power, whether it may do so without giving those who will be affected by the order the opportunity to make representations, and whether in this case appropriate consideration was given to the interests of those whose tenancies the FTT was directing should be terminated.”

Accordingly the appeal is not against the banning order itself. The appeal is against paragraph 2 of the order, which postponed the commencement of the order until the termination of the current tenancies of Mr Farrah’s properties, and required him to bring each tenancy to an end “on the first possible date” following the FTT’s order.

In light of the Deputy President’s comments I consider, first, whether the FTT had power to make the order it made in its paragraph 2 and, second, whether that order was a proper exercise of the FTT’s discretion. Mr Farrah has sent numerous letters to the Tribunal, and it is clear that he still seeks to challenge the banning order itself, but he does not have permission to do so. I am sorry that the following judgment will therefore feel unhelpful from his point of view, but I hope that it may nevertheless be of practical assistance to him and to the local housing authority.

Paragraph 3 does two things. First, it postpones the start of the banning order to the date when the current tenancies of Mr Farrah’s properties are terminated. Second, it requires him to terminate those tenancies as soon as possible. So there are two issues as to the FTT’s powers.

First, the postponement of the start of the banning order. Absent any postponement, it is well-established that a banning order can take immediate effect, despite the fact that there are tenants in the landlord’s properties at the date the order is made (In Knapp v Bristol City Council [2023] UKUT 113 (LC)). But section 17 (paragraph 5 above) addresses the need to deal with existing tenancies, in order to avoid a situation where the landlord was guilty of the offence of contravening a banning order from the moment it was made. It provides that a banning order may contain exceptions “for some or all of the period to which the ban relates” and provides that the exceptions may be subject to conditions.

It is commonplace for the start of a banning order to be postponed for a specified period insofar as it relates to specified properties, in order to give the landlord and their tenants time to make other arrangements; that limited postponement would appear to be just the sort of exception contemplated by section 17(3). The FTT typically makes banning orders with the start date postponed for, say, six months in relation to currently tenanted properties; that enables the landlord to dispose of a property subject to the tenancy, or to bring a tenancy or tenancies to an end.

Section 17 does not expressly provide for the start of a banning order as a whole to be postponed, for a period or until an event takes place. But as a matter of logic if an exception can be made in relation to certain properties, then an exception can be made to the effect of the order as a whole. I conclude that in principle there is no reason why a banning order should not be made on terms that it is to commence at a future date or on the occurrence of a future event. Therefore the FTT had the power to postpone the banning order until the termination of all the existing tenancies as it did in its paragraph 2. Whether that was a rational order to make in this case is a question to which I revert below.

Did the FTT have power to order the landlord to bring the existing tenancies to an end?

There is no such express power in the Housing Act 1988. The FTT has power to provide for exceptions in the terms set out in section 17(3), which is expressed in terms of periods of time; thus the order might take effect in three months’ time, as a whole or as regards specified properties. The provisions of section 17(4) are said to be examples of the exceptions described in section 17(3). Certainly section 17(4) contemplates the landlord having to bring tenancies to an end in order to comply with the banning order, and there is legislative provision for the landlord to do so; before 1 May 2026, the landlord would have been able to make use of the no-fault ground for possession in section 21 of the Housing Act 1988, and now that the 2025 Act is in force Ground 6B in Schedule 2 to the Housing Act 1988 provides the following mandatory ground for possession:

“(a)

letting the dwelling-house causes the landlord to breach a banning order under section 16 of the Housing and Planning Act 2016, or would do so if the landlord were to continue to let the dwelling-house.”

A discretion, such as the discretion to make a banning order, can be exercised on conditions, so the conditions provided for in section 17 are not the only conditions that can be set out by the FTT. I am not going to decide, without the benefit of legal argument, whether the FTT has power to require a landlord to evict his tenants; I do not have to do so, since for the reasons I go on to explain below I have found that the order was not a proper exercise of the FTT’s discretion. But I would make two points for consideration by the FTT for the future.

The first is that it is very troubling to see an order requiring the landlord to bring tenancies to an end without express and careful consideration of the interests of the tenants. A consideration of their interests is in any event one of the things the FTT must bear in mind when deciding whether or not to make a banning order (section 16(4)(d), paragraph 4 above, and to some extent the FTT did that by asking for information about them (paragraph 7 above). But that level of consideration would not appear to have been sufficient when the FTT was considering whether to require that those tenancies be brought to an end.

Second, at the date when the banning order was made in this case section 21 of the Housing Act 1988 was available to the landlord and tenants in general were subject to the possibility of no-fault eviction. Since 1 May 2026 they are not. So for the FTT since 1 May 2026 to make an order requiring a landlord to bring tenancies to an end is an even greater interference with their home and their rights than it would have been before that date. Both when considering whether to make a banning order, and when considering what condition to add to that order, the FTT will need to give express and careful consideration to the interests of the tenants concerned and in an appropriate case should give them the opportunity to make representations. Ground 6B in Schedule 2 to the Housing Act 1988 is a mandatory ground for possession, so the court in making an order for possession will have no scope to look at the interests of the tenants and it is therefore vital that the FTT do so.

Taking first the provision that the banning order was to take effect “on termination of the current tenancies of the Respondent’s properties”, in my judgment that order was irrational. The problem is the well-known difficulty in making an order to take effect on the occurrence of an event that might not happen.

Obviously, the FTT’s intention was that Mr Farrah would comply with the requirement to bring the tenancies to an end and would then be banned for 5 years. But suppose he failed to comply? The intention was in fact that the managing agents would make the necessary arrangements, in accordance with paragraph 3 of the order. If they, through incompetence or mishap or for reasons outside their control, failed to do so, the banning order would not take effect, and there is no “end stop” to provide for it to take effect in any event for a particular period. Paragraph 2 is irrational because it provides for the banning order to take effect at an uncertain point that might never occur.

Furthermore, the order fails to provide that the ban is postponed only in relation to the existing tenanted properties. There is nothing in the order that prevents Mr Farrah from letting another property in the meantime; I am not suggesting that he would, because he has said that he no longer wishes to be a landlord, but in general an order in this format is liable to ineffective because it leaves open a serious loophole.

As to the requirement to bring the tenancies to an end, in my judgment this was an improper exercise of discretion because no thought has been given by the FTT to the effect of that upon the existing tenants – as section 16(4)(d) requires. Merey to have inquired as to the tenants’ identity and the terms of their agreements (paragraph 7 above) is insufficient. The FTT failed to take into account relevant considerations.

For the reasons set out above I have to set aside paragraph 2 of the FTT’s order. That by itself would leave the order without a start date. Furthermore I do not know whether or not the terms of paragraph 2 have been complied with; if they have, the banning order is already in effect.

In order to make appropriate provision for a start date for the order, postponed in relation only to the four properties that were tenanted at the date of the hearing, and in order to avoid the need for this matter to be remitted to the FTT (bearing in mind Mr Farrah’s age and the need for all concerned to be in no doubt about the position from the date of this decision), I set aside the banning order as a whole and substitute the following order:

I have amended paragraphs 3 and 4 in order to make it clear that they are conditions imposed in accordance with section 17(4), and have further amended paragraph 3 in case I am wrong in my understanding that a firm of managing agents has already been appointed; if agents have now been appointed and approved by the City Council then paragraph 3 has already been complied with.

The effect of the order I now make is that if the tenancies that existed at the date of the FTT’s order have now all been brought to an end, then the order is now in effect without exception. If any of the tenancies that existed at the date of the FTT’s order is still in existence, then the banning order will take effect in relation to each such property three months after the date of this appeal decision, or when Mr Farrah ceases to be the landlord of the property, whichever is the earlier. Save as regards those properties the banning order takes effect now in full, and will expire 5 years from the date when the FTT made its order.

I am making that order without hearing further evidence about the tenants’ circumstances in order to avoid protracting these proceedings; I consider that I can safely do so for two reasons. First, it is clear from the FTT proceedings that Mr Farrah’s adult children are supporting him and there are obvious arrangements that Mr Farrah could make with them so as to cease to be the landlord, without disturbing the tenants. Second, Mr Farrah has now had many months to make appropriate arrangements and a further three moths gives him a generous time in which to complete them..