Local authorities will need to check the wording of their civil penalty notices following a case in which a private rented sector landlord has partially won an appeal against the imposition on him of two breach of licence condition civil penalties by Liverpool council.

The landlord's property was in the designated selective licence area of the city and he was served with a notice for failure to produce a gas safety certificate in time and another notice for failing to produce records of landlord inspections carried out at the property. The civil penalty relating to the gas certificate was £3,375 and the penalty relating to not producing evidence of property inspections was £5,625. Both of these requirements were conditions of the selective licence covering the property.

The First Tier tribunal confirmed the council's final notices served on the landlord but the landlord appealed to the Upper Tribunal where it was pointed out that the standard of proof required for a civil penalty was the same criminal standard as for a prosecution i.e. the local authority must be able to show that it was beyond reasonable doubt that the offence had been committed.

Due to the timeline of events relating to the gas certificate provision and the wording of the council's final notice which, effectively, was not clear enough in relation to the specific offence alleged by the council in the circumstances of that timeline, the Upper Tribunal said that because this was a criminal standard of proof, the wording of notices served by a council, if not properly clear, raised the "risk that a landlord might be found guilty of a non existent offence, or of one that has not been properly identified to the landlord" and thus this not "a mere technicality".

The decision (at 17 pages) is worth being read in full by local authorities and private rented sector landlords where licence conditions and civil penalties are concerned but an analysis in The Local Government Lawyer can also be found here.