The Upper Tribunal (UT) has upheld an appeal by the landlords of a rental property against a decision of the First-tier Tribunal (FTT) to vary an improvement notice, finding that the FTT had failed to explain why the local authority was justified in serving it.
The property, a five-bedroom terraced house, was let to five students who shared a living room and kitchen. Following a routine inspection, the local authority took the view that the open-plan nature of the living room and stairs increased the risk of a fire spreading from the living room. It served an improvement notice on the landlords, requiring that the stairs be enclosed from floor to ceiling and that a new wall be installed to separate the lounge from the stairs.
The landlords took the view that the work was unnecessary and would negatively affect the tenants. After obtaining their own risk assessment, they appealed the improvement notice to the FTT.
The FTT agreed that the works proposed were excessive. While it concluded that it had been reasonable for the local authority to serve an improvement notice, the FTT varied the notice to instead require alterations to the bedroom doors, including the fitting of smoke seals and self-closing devices and the removal of locks.
The landlords appealed to the UT on the grounds that, once the FTT had found that the local authority had dramatically overestimated the level of fire hazard, it should have appreciated that the hazard level was too low to justify varying the improvement notice rather than quashing it.
The UT considered that, in the circumstances, the conclusion that service of an improvement notice was justified called for careful explanation. In the UT’s judgment, the FTT had failed to explain why the local authority, having gone so very far wrong in assessing the hazard, was not wrong to serve an improvement notice. Quashing the improvement notice, the UT substituted a decision that the local authority had been wrong to serve it. Had the FTT set out to explain why the local authority had not been wrong to serve an improvement notice rather than a hazard awareness notice, it would have been unable to do so.