If I outstay my welcome in a camera-controlled car park, I will probably be issued with a penalty charge notice.
That notice would, in the ordinary course of events, be posted to the registered address of my motor vehicle. But supposing I don’t receive that PCN because I have moved away from my old address and have not yet got around to updating the DVLA with my change of address? And supposing I don’t receive any of the follow-up correspondence, during which time the original £60 PCN has accumulated to £600? The first I know about it, is when a bailiff comes knocking at my door. But Mr Bailiff, I didn’t receive anything?
Tough! Parking enforcement is entirely a matter of process. No allowance is made for oversight. Fortunately, the law is not always like that.
Supposing a civil judgment is entered against me in my absence for legal proceedings which I knew nothing about. Even if the papers were correctly served, I might still have good grounds for asking a district judge to set aside that judgment if I can convince the judge that it would be unfair to let the judgment stand, because I had an arguable defence. A similar issue arose in relation to two recent cases at the Upper Tribunal Lands Chamber, which concerned situations where papers had been correctly served by a local authority but had not come to the attention of the intended recipient.
In the first case, Tabassam v Manchester City Council [2024] UKUT (LC), Ms Tabassam was held to have had a ‘reasonable excuse’ for not complying with a statutory improvement notice which had been sent to the proprietorship address stated on her land registry title, as well as well as to the property itself. But neither notice reached her and she therefore did not respond. In default of her response, Newcastle City Council imposed a financial penalty against her for failing to comply with the improvement notice.
The reason why Ms Tabassam had not received the improvement notice was that she had moved away from her old address and had not updated the land registry record. She pleaded ‘reasonable excuse’. Her plea was upheld as it was said that the council could have found a more up to date address if it had searched other internal records.
In the case of Newcastle City Council v Abdullah [2024] UKUT 140, the city council had adopted a landlord licensing scheme under the Housing Act 2004 for the area within which Mr. Abdullah’s property was situated. A licence issued by the council permitted Mr Abdullah to manage premises at 29 Gillies Street subject to standard conditions requiring him to provide certain information on demand. The council later requested information from him by letter sent by ordinary post and addressed to him at an address he no longer occupied. The key question in that appeal was whether a demand which never came to his attention was nevertheless an effective demand for the purposes of the licence condition. If it was, Mr. Abdullah’s failure to comply with that condition would have been an offence contrary to section 95 (2)(b) of the Housing Act 2004 unless he could prove that he had a reasonable excuse for that failure.
In this case, the upper tribunal found that the notice had been properly served, even though there was other e-mail correspondence on an unrelated matter between Mr. Abdullah and the council which quoted a more up-to-date address. Nevertheless, the upper tribunal found against Mr. Abdallah on the question of whether service of the notice was valid.
What made Mr Abdullah’s case different from that of Ms Tabassam was that he was under a legal duty to notify the council of any change in his address. However, the upper tribunal left open the issue of ‘reasonable excuse’, which was remitted back to the first-tier tribunal.
One of the puzzling things about these two cases is why they were ever allowed to reach the Upper Tribunal. Wouldn’t a wiser local authority, in those circumstances, simply have accepted the owner’s claim that they had not received the earlier documentation, and started the whole process again? Yes, starting again might be annoying. But it’s a damned sight cheaper than losing a ‘reasonable excuse’ argument in the upper tribunal.
BRUCE AND HOLLY 