UK Construction and Law

A landlord who appealed to the council instead of the tribunal has his challenge to a 15,600 pound penalty restored

By Staff Writer  |  1 September 2026

A director who wrote to the local housing authority the day after receiving a final notice, rather than to the tribunal, was 30 days late and had his appeal struck out. The Upper Tribunal has held that the first instance decision looked only at whether the reason for delay was good, and ignored the shortness of the delay, the size of the penalty and an apparent confusion about which notice had been served.

Civil penalties for housing offences are decided by the authority that brings them, and the only real check is an appeal to the tribunal within 28 days. Miss the window and the penalty stands whatever its merits. A decision issued on 5 August examines what a tribunal must think about before it refuses to extend that window.

The penalty was 15,600 pounds, imposed on a company for a licensing offence under Part 3 of the Housing Act 2004. The power comes from section 249A, and the machinery sits in Schedule 13A: a notice of intent giving 28 days for representations, then a final notice requiring payment within 28 days and setting out the right of appeal.

The wrong envelope

The company's director received the final notice on 25 March 2025 and wrote back the next day, to the authority. He had not appreciated that an appeal goes to the tribunal. The reply he got did nothing to correct him: it confirmed receipt of his representation, said it would be passed to another manager to review, and said the manager would decide either to impose the penalty or uphold his representation. On 8 May the authority sent a response headed as a notice of intent to issue a financial penalty, saying final decision notices would follow shortly.

He filed his appeal at the tribunal on 22 May 2025. The deadline had been 22 April, so he was 30 days late. He had, however, emailed the tribunal on 8 May attaching the representations he had sent the authority in March, which puts him 16 days out on that measure.

Directions asking him to explain the delay were not given until October 2025. When he answered, the tribunal addressed only whether the authority's use of a wrong address excused him. It held that it did not, because the final notice had in fact reached him, and struck the appeal out for want of jurisdiction.

What was left out

The Upper Tribunal was careful about the limits on interfering with a discretion. A decision is not disturbed because an appellate body would have decided differently; it must be unjustifiable. It found this one was, because a series of relevant matters had simply not been weighed.

The tribunal had not considered the second half of the explanation, which was that the director got the procedure wrong. It had not taken account of the fact that he responded immediately, albeit to the wrong recipient. It had not looked at how short the delay was, or noticed that it can have had no effect on the authority's ability to answer the appeal. It had not weighed the level of the penalty against the consequence of striking the appeal out altogether.

There was a further point. The correspondence contains no copy of a notice of intent, and the authority's own reply of 8 May was headed as one. The director's response would have been exactly right had the document he received been a notice of intent rather than a final notice.

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.

Upper Tribunal Judge Elizabeth Cooke

The practical reading

Three things carry across to anyone facing an enforcement notice with a short appeal clock, whether it comes from a housing authority, a building control body or a safety regulator. The first is that responding to the body that issued the notice is not an appeal, and a courteous acknowledgement from that body is not an extension. The second is that where an application to extend time is opposed, the length of the delay, the prejudice caused by it and the size of what is at stake are all matters the decision maker has to address, and a decision that addresses only the quality of the excuse is vulnerable. The third is that procedural confusion cuts both ways: a notice that reads like the wrong kind of notice is a point for the recipient, not against.

The appeal against the penalty itself now returns to the first instance tribunal, where it will be heard on its merits. The authority took no part in the appeal.