On 6th July we reported on the case of Northumberland Mews Ltd V Thanet District Council where a landlord was appealing against the imposition, by the council, of 5 separate civil penalties for failure to licence 5 flats in a block of flats and where the landlord argued there should just have been 1 civil penalty imposed because it was the whole block that was the Part 3 house under the 2004 Housing Act.

The appeal decision was made on 14th July by Judge Elizabeth Cooke in favour of Thanet district council. The case can be read in full here but hinged on the meaning of section 91(1) of the act: " A licence may not relate to more than one Part 3 house." with the judge saying "... the meaning of s.91(1) can only be that the premises to which a licence relates must be a single Part 3 house - whether a flat or a number of flats comprising part of a building, or the whole building. Any other construction leads to a loss of the flexibility that is crucial to the [licensing] scheme, and flies in the face of the clear drafting of the statute by importing a complicated requirement to identify the smallest or largest unit that could be a Part 3 house in any given case." The judge added that this meant that nothing stood in the way of the first tier tribunal's finding that each of the 5 civil penalties (of £10,000 each) related to a Part 3 house because each flat was a Part 3 house that required to be licensed.