Manchester City Council v Naila Tabbasam [2026] EWCA Civ 361

[2026] EWCA Civ 361Case No CA-2024-001350
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE UPPER TRIBUNAL LANDS CHAMBER
Upper Tribunal Judge Elizabeth Cooke
LC-2023-000388
Venue Royal Courts of Justice, Strand, London, WC2A 2LLDate 26/03/2026
Before
LADY JUSTICE FALKLORD JUSTICE ZACAROLILORD JUSTICE DOVE
Between
MANCHESTER CITY COUNCILAppellantNAILA TABBASAMRespondent
Paul Whatley (instructed by Legal Services Council of the City of Manchester) for AppellantRiccardo Calzavara and Hugh Rowan (instructed on a direct access basis through the assistance of Advocate) for RespondentHearing Hearing dates: 19 March 2026
Approved JudgmentThis judgment was handed down remotely at 10.30am on 26 March 2026 by circulation to the parties or their representatives by e-mail and by release to the National Archives..............................
[1]The question raised by this appeal is whether a landlord, served with an improvement notice at and in respect of a property occupied by her tenants, where that was the address for the landlord recorded in the proprietorship register at the Land Registry, has a “reasonable excuse” for failing to comply with the notice because she did not in fact receive it.[2]It is an appeal against the decision of Upper Tribunal Judge Cooke sitting in the Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) (the “judge”), dated 10 April 2024. By that decision, Judge Cooke allowed the appeal by the landlord, Naila Tabbasam (“Ms Tabbasam”), against the decision of the First Tier Tribunal (Property Chamber) dated 22 May 2023 (the “FTT”).

Background

[3]Ms Tabbasam is the owner of 58 Ollier Avenue (“Ollier Avenue”). She purchased it in 2008. She lets it out to tenants. In March 2019, the tenants of Ollier Avenue complained to the appellant, Manchester City Council (the “Council”), about disrepair at the property.[4]The Council checked the Land Registry which showed the address for service on Ms Tabbasam as proprietor of Ollier Avenue to be Ollier Avenue itself. The Council also checked its council tax records for Ollier Avenue, which showed the owner to be Ms Tabbasam, but at a different address being 75 Barlow Road (“Barlow Road”). Ms Tabbasam has in fact lived, since 2014, at 19 Kedlestone Avenue (“Kedlestone Avenue”).[5]The Council then sent the following documents to both Barlow Road and (save for those referred to in (7) and (8)) Ollier Avenue:(1) a letter notifying Ms Tabbasam of the complaints, on 21 March 2019;(2) a notice of entry for an inspection on 2 May 2019;(3) an Improvement Notice dated 14 May 2019;(4) a Notice of Entry for inspections planned for 3 September 2019 and 23 September 2019;(5) Notice of intention to enter and do works on 23 September 2019 (although the respondent did not enter and do the works);(6) an invitation to attend a PACE interview, on 9 October 2019;(7) a Notice of Intent on 15 November 2019 giving notice of a proposed financial penalty of £22,500 for failure to comply with the Improvement Notice; and(8) a Final Notice of the Financial Penalty on 10 January 2020.[6]Ms Tabbasam did not receive any of these communications. The tenants did not pass them on to her, and she was no longer living at Barlow Road.[7]Mr Whatley, who appeared for the Council, stressed that the improvement notice in this case identified serious concerns about the property, including a category 1 hazard, namely inadequate heating.[8]In March 2020, the tenants left Ollier Avenue. Ms Tabbasam – still unaware of the communications from the Council – refurbished the property and re-let it to new tenants.[9]In July 2020, the Council sent a final reminder for the overdue payment of the penalty of £22,500. This time Ms Tabbasam received the notice because it was sent to Kedlestone Avenue. By this time, it appears that the Council’s council tax records had been updated to identify Ms Tabbasam’s address (as the owner of Ollier Avenue) as Kedlestone Avenue. Upon receipt, Ms Tabbasam contacted the Council whereupon she was sent the improvement notice and the Final Notice of Financial Penalty. She appealed the Financial Penalty to the FTT (for which purpose an extension of time was granted).[10]The FTT found that Ms Tabbasam had committed an offence under s.30 of the Housing Act 2004 (“HA 2004”), because she had failed to comply with the improvement notice, which had been validly served on her. The fact that she did not know about it, because of her own failure to update her address for service at the Land Registry and her address for council tax purposes, did not amount to a reasonable excuse pursuant to s.30(5). The FTT imposed, however, a reduced penalty of £15,000, as they regarded Mrs Tabbasam’s culpability as medium rather than high.[11]Ms Tabbasam appealed to the Upper Tribunal on the ground that she had a defence of reasonable excuse. The Upper Tribunal allowed the appeal, finding that Ms Tabbasam did have a reasonable excuse.

The legislative context

[12]By s.249A(1) HA 2004, a local housing authority may impose a financial penalty where there has been a relevant housing offence, which includes an offence under s.30.[13]By s.30(1) HA 2004:
“where an improvement notice has become operative, the person on whom the notice was served commits an offence if he fails to comply with it.”
S.30(4) provides a defence if the person on whom the notice is served “has a reasonable excuse for failing to comply with the notice.”[14]An improvement notice is a notice requiring the person on whom it is served to take such remedial action as the notice specifies. By s.15(2), the general rule is that an improvement notice becomes operative at the end of the period of 21 days beginning with the day it is served.[15]By paragraph 1 of Schedule 13A to HA 2004, before imposing a financial penalty under s.249A the local housing authority must give the person notice of the authority’s proposal (a “notice of intent”), setting out the amount of the proposed financial penalty, the reasons for imposing it, and information about the right to make representations under paragraph 4.[16]Pursuant to paragraph 4 of Schedule 13A, a person who is given a notice of intent may make written representations to the local housing authority about the proposal to impose a financial penalty, within 28 days of the day after that on which the notice was given. After the end of that period, the local authority must decide whether, and if so in what amount, to impose a financial penalty on the person. If it decides to do so, it must give the person a “final notice”, specifying the amount of the penalty, the reasons for imposing it, information about how to pay it, the period for payment, information about rights of appeal and the consequences of failure to pay.[17]Service of notices by local authorities is governed by s.233 of the Local Government Act 1972:
“(1) Subject to subsection (8) below, subsections (2) to (5) below shall have effect in relation to any notice, order or other document required or authorised by or under any enactment to be given to or served on any person by or on behalf of a local authority or by an officer of a local authority. (2) Any such document may be given to or served on the person in question either by delivering it to him, or by leaving it at his proper address, or by sending it by post to him at that address. … (4) For the purposes of this section and of section 26 of the Interpretation Act 1889 (service of documents by post) in its application to this section, the proper address of any person to or on whom a document is to be given or served shall be his last known address …”

The FTT’s judgment

[18]The FTT heard evidence from Ms Tabbasam, and from officers of the Council. At the heart of Ms Tabbasam’s evidence was that she did not know that there was any improvement notice. She said that she believed the tenants had deliberately damaged the property to try to obtain a council house, and had denied her access to the property to make repairs. She said that she refurbished the property once the tenants left in March 2020 without any knowledge of the improvement notice.[19]The FTT, mindful of the fact that Ms Tabbasam was unrepresented, interpreted her evidence as advancing a defence of reasonable excuse. It considered that, although this was not explicitly pleaded, Ms Tabbasam was asserting that there was an absence of fault on her part due to the information having been sent by the Council to the wrong address and the Council should have done more to identify where she was living in order to give her an opportunity to respond.[20]The reasons for its conclusion in rejecting that defence are shortly stated as follows:
“39. We note that it is accepted that the address which was held at the Land Registry and on the Council Tax record is a past address of Ms Tabbasam. There is no suggestion that the address used was a clerical error or mistranscription by an administrator. No evidence has been provided by Ms Tabbasam that she sent change of address information which was overlooked or not updated. 40. We therefore find that the address which the Council obtained when it consulted the Land Registry records was incorrect due to Ms Tabbasam’s own administrative failure, not that of a third party. 41. We are referred to the case of Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council v Tanna [2017] EWCA Civ 50 and we accept the submissions of Mr Whatley that Ms Tabbasam’s default in failing to keep her address details up to date with the Land Registry cannot amount to a ‘reasonable excuse’. To find otherwise would be for the Applicant to rely upon her own failures to avoid culpability.”
[21]The FTT went on to consider the amount of penalty. At §47, it accepted Ms Tabbasam’s evidence that she was entirely unaware of the events taking place at the property, and that once she became aware she rectified the problems identified. They found, however, that she was negligent in her actions in not updating and maintaining the correct address information, and that her administrative systems were inadequate, leading to the commission of the offence, although they accepted that she was oblivious of the importance of maintaining the correct address in the correct register, and that she naively imagined that the different aspects of the Council with which she was dealing for different purposes (e.g. council tax) would be in communication with the housing authority. They concluded that there was medium culpability and medium harm, which placed the penalty in Band 4 (as opposed to Band 5 where the Council had placed it), and fixed the penalty at the bottom of Band 4 at £15,000.[22]At §23 of her judgment, the judge correctly noted the distinction between the elements of the offence under s.30 HA 2004 (which the Council must establish) and the defence of reasonable excuse (where the burden lies on the defendant). She recorded that, because the improvement notice had been correctly served, the elements of the offence had been made out. The question which arose on the appeal to the UT, however, was whether Ms Tabbasam could show, to the civil standard of proof, that she had the defence of reasonable excuse.[23]At §25 of her judgment, the judge recorded that the FTT had accepted Ms Tabbasam’s evidence that she was entirely unaware of the problems at her property and that “once she became aware she refurbished the property and rectified the problems identified”. She took it that “the FTT therefore accepted her evidence that she was unable to gain access before the tenant left because the tenant would not let her in, which was why the property got into a bad state.”[24]The Council argued that, where the notice is properly served, a landlord has deemed notice of it, and to allow a reasonable excuse defence would rob the legislation of its purpose, because all a landlord would have to do to avoid liability for disrepair would be to avoid updating his or her address at the Land Registry.

The judge rejected this, at §27, saying:

“I am not persuaded by that argument. Local housing authorities and tribunals should be able to distinguish between landlords deliberately evading service and those who have simply failed to update their address details, and on the basis of the evidence accepted by the FTT it is clear that Ms Tabbasam fell into the latter category. The FTT accepted that she did not deliberately avoid receiving the Improvement Notice. She had been registered all along for council tax at her home address and she was easy to find once the respondent tried to do so for the purposes of enforcement. To find her guilty of a criminal offence in those circumstances seems to me exceptionally harsh.”
[25]At §28 she noted that the Council could not point to any authority where a landlord had been found to have committed the offence of failing to comply with an improvement notice where he or she had never received the notice. She distinguished (at §29 and §30) cases where landlords were found to have committed the offence of failure to obtain a house in multiple occupation licence (“HMO”), despite the fact that they did not know of it, and noted that even in that context, it had been held that ignorance of the requirement might in some circumstances afford a defence of reasonable excuse, citing Marigold and others v Wells [2022] UKUT 33 (LC) (“Marigold”), where the Deputy Chamber President of the Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber) referred (at §49) to the decision of the Upper Tribunal (Tax and Chancery Chamber) in Perrin v HMRC [2018] UKUT 156 (TCC) (“Perrin”), at §82:
“One situation that can sometimes cause difficulties is when the taxpayer’s asserted reasonable excuse is purely that he/she did not know of the particular requirement that has been shown to have been breached. It is a much-cited aphorism that “ignorance of the law is no excuse”, and on occasion this has been given as a reason why the defence of reasonable excuse cannot be available in such circumstances. We see no basis for this argument. Some requirements of the law are well-known, simple and straightforward but others are much less so. It will be a matter of judgment for the FTT in each case whether it was objectively reasonable for the particular taxpayer, in the circumstances of the case, to have been ignorant of the requirement in question, and for how long. The Clean Car Co itself provides an example of such a situation.”
[26]At §32, the judge accepted that the improvement notice had been served correctly on Ms Tabbasam, but that did not equate to Ms Tabbasam having deemed knowledge of the notice. Nor was it appropriate to regard her failure to update her address for service as wrongdoing, or negligent, as the FTT had characterised it.[27]On that basis, she concluded, at §33, that the FTT had been wrong and irrational to find that Ms Tabbasam did not have a defence of reasonable excuse. She substituted her own finding that she did have that defence.

The grounds of appeal

[28]The Council was granted permission to appeal by Asplin LJ on six grounds:(1) The judge erred in law in recognising a reasonable excuse defence founded upon Ms Tabbasam’s own default, which is said to be inconsistent with binding authority.(2) The judge’s decision is inconsistent with the approach taken to reasonable excuse defences relating to other offences, in particular cases concerning a failure to licence a property, where ignorance of the licensing requirement has been consistently rejected as a reasonable excuse.(3) The judge’s judgment placed an impermissible gloss on s.233 of the Local Government Act 1972.(4) The judge erred in placing emphasis on the “exceptionally harsh” consequences for Ms Tabbasam.(5) The judge erred in relying on a fact that was not evidenced, namely that Ms Tabbasam had been registered all along for council tax at her (actual) home address, and that she was easy to find once the Council tried to do so for the purposes of enforcement.(6) The judge erred in recognising a reasonable excuse defence of such broad scope that it creates an unacceptable degree of uncertainty for local authorities.[29]As Asplin LJ noted in giving permission, these are all facets of the same issue, being whether the reasonable excuse defence is available in circumstances in which the notice was properly served at the address on the proprietorship register. Reflecting that point, Mr Whatley, who appeared for the Council, put as the mainstay of his case the following core propositions:(1) The test for reasonable excuse is an objective one, the question being whether what Ms Tabbasam did was a reasonable thing for a responsible landlord to do, conscious of and intending to comply with their obligations.(2) It is a basic obligation of a landlord, which all landlords should be aware of, that they should maintain with the Land Registry an up-to-date address for service of documents on them.(3) It does not lie in the mouth of a landlord such as Ms Tabbasam to say that they did not know they were required to keep their address at the Land Registry up to date. Accordingly, the defence of reasonable excuse was not open to her.

Analysis and conclusions

[30]It is important to understand the role of this Court on a second appeal such as this. The question for us is whether the judge erred in law either(1) in concluding that the FTT made an error of law or(2) in remaking the decision herself.[31]Mr Whatley fairly accepted that the judge was right to conclude that the FTT had made an error of law, the relevant error being that, in light of the Oldham v Tanna decision cited in the passage from the FTT’s judgment above (“Tanna”), Ms Tabbasam “cannot” rely upon her own default in keeping her address details up to date as a reasonable excuse, because that would be to allow her to rely upon her own failures. He accepted that this was too inflexible a proposition, and that there may be cases where a landlord could rely upon the reasonable excuse defence even though they were at fault in some way.[32]I would add that the FTT’s reliance on Tanna was in any event misplaced. That case concerned the validity of a notice served by a local planning authority under s.215 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. Under that section the local authority may serve a notice on the registered proprietor of land if its condition adversely affected the amenity of a part of the authority’s area. Mr Tanna was the registered proprietor of a derelict former nursing home at Lake View in Oldham. The proprietorship register for the nursing home identified Mr Tanna as the proprietor and gave his address as 8 Greenfield Close. The authority posted a notice to that address. Mr Tanna no longer lived there, however. The letter was returned with “Not here!” written on the envelope.[33]S.233 of the Local Government Act 1972 (quoted above at §‎17) applied, so that adequate notice was given if the notice was left, or posted to, that person’s last known address.[34]At first instance in Tanna, the judge had held (in reasoning that was not challenged in the Court of Appeal) that a former address will only be a last known address if the server of the notice has taken reasonable steps to find out what the intended recipient’s current address is, and that what he would have found out on making those enquiries will be knowledge imputed to him: see §18 of the judgment of Lewison LJ (with whom Arden LJ agreed) in the Court of Appeal.[35]Building on that conclusion, Lewison LJ reasoned by reference to the Land Registration Rules 2003 (SI 1417/2003) (the “2003 Rules”), as follows. The 2003 Rules state (by Rule 8) that the address stated in the proprietorship register is an “address for service”. Rule 198 requires the registered proprietor to give the registrar an address for service. He said at §24:
“It is no doubt the case that the primary purpose of the requirement … that a registered proprietor must give an address for service is to enable notices and other documents to be served under the Land Registration Act itself. However, the fact that the address thus given appears in a public part of the register indicates that its use is not necessarily confined to internal administrative purposes.”
[36]He concluded, at §28, as follows:
“I would hold as a general rule, unless there is a statutory requirement to the contrary, in a case in which (i) a person (in this case the local planning authority rather than the council taken as a whole) wishes to serve notice relating to a particular property on the owner of that property, and (ii) title to that property is registered at HM Land Registry, that person’s obligation to make reasonable inquiries goes no further than to search the proprietorship register to ascertain the address of the registered proprietor. It is the responsibility of the registered proprietor to keep his address up to date…”
[37]The FTT in this case was wrong to base its conclusion on Tanna because the case was not concerned with, and says nothing about, the defence of reasonable excuse. It was concerned only with whether service of the notice was effective, as to which there is no dispute in this case. The question here is the separate one as to whether a defence of reasonable excuse has been made out. The relevance of Lewison LJ’s statement that it is the responsibility of the registered proprietor to keep their address up to date was to explain why the local authority’s obligation to make reasonable enquiries did not extend beyond consulting the proprietorship register. He was not purporting to say anything about whether failure to keep the address at the Land Registry up to date would preclude a defence of reasonable excuse.[38]Mr Whatley referred to other cases where the fact that a person did not receive a notice was irrelevant to the question whether a notice had been properly served in accordance with applicable service requirements: Serpes v City of London [2017] EWHC 11241 (Ch); Rushmoor Borough Council v Reynolds (1991) 23 HLR 495; and Birmingham City Council v Bravington [2023] EWCA Civ 308; [2023] KB 421. He pointed out that serious consequences flowed from the conclusion that the notice was effectively served: a bankruptcy order in Serpes, a direction to convict, on remittal to the Magistrates, in Rushmoor; and an order for possession in Bravington.[39]As Mr Calzavara, who appeared with Mr Rowan for Ms Tabbasam, submitted, in none of these cases was there any statutory defence of reasonable excuse. They are of no relevance, therefore, to the applicability of such a defence. The most they show is that, in the absence of such a defence being provided in the statute, harsh consequences can flow from the conclusion that a notice – which was not in fact received by the defendant – is found to have been duly served.[40]Mr Whatley also did not dispute that ignorance of the law might in an appropriate case be relevant in establishing a reasonable excuse defence, as suggested at §82 of Perrin quoted above at §‎25, and referred to, in the Lands Chamber context, in Marigold. He submitted that it would depend on how “obscure” the relevant legal rule was, and where, on a scale between a sophisticated commercial landlord and an “amateur” landlord holding just one or two properties, the particular circumstances lay. I see the sense in the position adopted by the Upper Tribunal in Perrin but, as the point was common ground before us, it is not necessary to express a conclusion on it. In any event, for the reasons developed below, I do not accept that the facts of this case are equivalent or analogous to the type of “ignorance of law” case referred to in Perrin or Marigold.[41]Perrin was in fact referred to by this Court in Archer v Revenue and Customs Commissioners [2023] EWCA Civ 626; [2023] 1 WLR 3558. Whipple LJ (with whom Simler LJ and Falk LJ agreed), while making no reference to §82 of Perrin (because the point made there was not relevant to the issues in Archer), cited with approval the preceding paragraph of the Upper Tribunal’s judgment:
“81. When considering a ‘reasonable excuse’ defence, therefore, in our view the FTT can usefully approach matters in the following way: (1) First, establish what facts the taxpayer asserts give rise to a reasonable excuse (this may include the belief, acts or omissions of the taxpayer or any other person, the taxpayer’s own experience and relevant attributes, the situation of the taxpayer at any relevant time and any other relevant external facts). (2) Second, decide which of those facts are proven. (3) Third, decide whether, viewed objectively, those proven facts do indeed amount to an objectively reasonable excuse for the default and the time when that objectively reasonable excuse ceased. In doing so, it should take into account the experience and other relevant attributes of the taxpayer and the situation in which the taxpayer found himself at the relevant time or times. It might assist the FTT, in this context, to ask itself the question ‘was what the taxpayer did (or omitted to do or believed) objectively reasonable for this taxpayer in those circumstances?’ (4) Fourth, having decided when any reasonable excuse ceased, decide whether the taxpayer remedied the failure without unreasonable delay after that time (unless, exceptionally, the failure was remedied before the reasonable excuse ceased). In doing so, the FTT should again decide the matter objectively, but taking into account the experience and other relevant attributes of the taxpayer and the situation in which the taxpayer found himself at the relevant time or times.”
[42]Mr Whatley’s core proposition is based on the third sub-paragraph, and the requirement that the reasonableness of the excuse be viewed objectively. He further relied on the following passage from the decision of HHJ Judge Medd QC in The Clean Car Co Ltd v Customs and Excise Comrs [1991] VATTR 234 (another case involving the defence of reasonable excuse in a tax context), cited with approval at §21 of Archer:
“The test of whether or not there is a reasonable excuse is an objective one. In my judgment it is an objective test in this sense. One must ask oneself: was what the taxpayer did a reasonable thing for a responsible trader conscious of and intending to comply with his obligations regarding tax, but having the experience and other relevant attributes of the taxpayer and placed in the situation that the taxpayer found himself at the relevant time, a reasonable thing to do?”
[43]He submitted that Ms Tabbasam could not satisfy this objective standard, because the obligation to keep an address for service at the Land Registry up to date is a basic obligation which anyone letting out a property to tenants should be aware of. He emphasised that property letting is a business even if done by someone like Ms Tabbasam who has only one or two properties.[44]He cited other cases which, he said, showed that ignorance of a legal obligation is no excuse in itself unless accompanied by some supervening factor: Thurrock Council v Daoudi [2020] UKUT 209 (LC) (“Daoudi”); and D’Costa v D’Andrea [2021] UKUT 144 (LC) (“D’Costa”).[45]Daoudi concerned a landlord’s failure to obtain an HMO licence. A defence of reasonable excuse is permitted by s.72(5) HA 2004. A financial penalty was imposed on him under s.72 of HA 2004. The FTT set aside the penalty. On appeal to the Upper Tribunal, Deputy President Martin Rodger QC held that the FTT had erred in reaching this conclusion by taking into account irrelevant matters, one of which was the landlord’s ignorance of the legal requirement to obtain a licence. He held that ignorance of the need to obtain a licence may be relevant in at least two ways. First, ignorance of the facts which gave rise to the duty to obtain a licence may provide a defence of reasonable excuse. Second, ignorance (more broadly) of the need to obtain a licence might be relevant to the issue of culpability, which went to the amount of any penalty.[46]The FTT in Daoudi had not expressly relied on the defence of reasonable excuse, but Judge Rodger QC characterised its decision, in setting aside the penalty, as “effectively giving [Mr Daoudi] the benefit of the defence without explicitly addressing it”. It was an error of law in this respect to take into account Mr Daoudi’s ignorance of the law. (This decision must now be read in light of the Deputy President’s later judgment in Marigold, referring to Perrin, which was not cited in Daoudi.)[47]D’Costa also involved a breach of the obligation to obtain an HMO licence. Mr Whatley cited it as an example of a case where there was some supervening factor, in addition to the mere fact that the defendant was unaware of the legal requirement, which supported a defence of reasonable excuse. The supervening event was that someone from the Council had told the defendant that he did not need to obtain a licence.[48]In my judgment, the cases cited in which ignorance of the law was relied on in the context of a reasonable excuse defence do not support the Council’s case, for two reasons.[49]First, the question in those cases was the relevance to the defence of reasonable excuse of the defendant’s ignorance of the very statutory obligation (such as the requirement to obtain an HMO licence), breach of which gave rise to a penalty. No such question arises in this case, because it is accepted that Ms Tabbasam never received the improvement notice so that she did not know of the fact which gave rise to the legal obligation under the statute. Instead, the relevant obligation relied on is the obligation to keep an up-to-date address for service at the Land Registry. As Mr Calzavara and Mr Rowan pointed out in their skeleton argument, the question here is whether there is a reasonable excuse for complying with the improvement notice. The focus was not (either in the FTT or in the UT) on whether Ms Tabbasam had a reasonable excuse for not updating the address at the Land Registry.[50]Second, it is far from obvious that Ms Tabbasam failed to comply with any obligation as regards the Land Registry. Rule 198 of the 2003 Rules requires the registered proprietor of property to provide the registrar with an address for service. More than one address can be provided. There is no requirement that the address must be one at which the registered proprietor resides. It is not known whether Ms Tabbasam lived at Ollier Avenue when it was first purchased by her in 2008, or at any point since then. Even if not, I do not regard it as necessarily wrong for her to have identified Ollier Avenue itself as an address for correspondence sent to her. She might reasonably have expected any tenants occupying the property to have forwarded correspondence that was addressed to her.[51]It could well be said that it would have been sensible, if and when the tenants occupying the property became uncooperative, for Ms Tabbasam to have updated the correspondence address to avoid the problem which has in fact arisen. I do not accept, however, Mr Whatley’s submission that a landlord who does not do so can be said to be in breach of the requirement under Rule 198 because they must be taken to have accepted the risk that correspondence would not be forwarded on to them.[52]For the same reason, even if Mr Whatley’s core proposition were correct as a matter of law, it would not apply here. In any event, I do not accept the core proposition that a landlord who does not keep their address at the Land Registry up-to-date is precluded from relying on the lack of receipt of notice as a reasonable excuse for not complying with the obligation (of whatever nature) to which the notice related. As §81 of Perrin makes clear, the availability of the defence is highly fact specific and depends on all the circumstances.[53]I observe that this case is further distinguishable from Tanna, in addition to the reason given at §‎37 above, because the address provided to the Land Registry in Tanna was neither the address of the relevant property, nor Mr Tanna’s current address, but a former address with which he had ceased to have any connection.[54]Reverting to the only question which arises on this appeal – given it is common ground that the judge was right to remake the decision having found that the FTT decision should be set aside for an error of law – I am satisfied that there was no error of law in the judge’s remade decision.[55]The judge was entitled to find that Ms Tabbasam had a reasonable excuse for not complying with the improvement notice because she never received it, and that she was not precluded from relying on the defence by the circumstances in which the notice failed to reach her. For the reasons I have already explained, the provision of the address of the tenanted property as her address for correspondence at the Land Registry was not in itself wrongful. The immediate cause of the notice not reaching her was that it was not passed on to her by the tenants at the property. In these circumstances, it was open to the judge to conclude that Ms Tabbasam had a reasonable excuse, notwithstanding that she could have avoided the risk that the tenants would fail to forward correspondence to her by providing her own home address instead, or as well. There was no error of law in that conclusion, or the judge’s related finding that this was at most a technical error that fell short of constituting wrongdoing or negligence.[56]The Council also rely on the fact that notice was sent to Barlow Road because Ms Tabbasam had failed to update her address, as owner of Ollier Avenue, to Kedlestone Avenue for council tax purposes. This is something of a red herring. Mr Whatley was unable to point to anything which obliged Ms Tabbasam to have updated her address. Mr Calzavara referred us to s.16 of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976 which empowers a local authority to request information from, among others, the freehold owner of land, and renders a person who fails to comply with such a request guilty of an offence. It is not suggested that any such request was made of Ms Tabbasam. For the purposes of the test for which Mr Whatley advocated, it could not be said that keeping an up-to-date address for council tax purposes was an “obligation” of which a reasonable landlord would be conscious, or with which he or she intended to comply.[57]The above deals with the core proposition at the heart of the Council’s appeal, as well as the first two grounds of appeal. For completeness, I address briefly the remaining grounds of appeal. My reasons for rejecting them reflect those set out in Mr Calzavara’s and Mr Rowan’s skeleton.[58]Ground 3 (that the judge’s conclusion places an impermissible gloss on s.233) fails to recognise the distinction between the elements which the Council must establish in seeking to prove the commission of the offence, and the matters which Ms Tabbasam must establish to make out a defence of reasonable excuse. While a landlord is not entitled to assert that the non-receipt meant that there was no service of the improvement notice, there is no rule which prevents a landlord from relying on the fact that the notice was not in fact received in support of a reasonable excuse defence.[59]Ground 4 is that the judge was wrong to place emphasis on the “exceptionally harsh” consequences. That comment (at §27 of the judge’s judgment) does not form part of her conclusion, the reasons for which are identified at §32 and §33. Moreover, the Council’s arguments under this head rely on the cases referred to at §‎38 above, which are distinguishable because they did not involve any consideration of the defence of reasonable excuse. It was not an error of law in my view for the judge to consider the harshness of the consequences for Ms Tabbasam in considering whether the fact that she did not update her address at the Land Registry precluded her from relying on a reasonable excuse defence to the offence of failing to comply with the improvement notice.[60]Ground 5 relates to the judge’s reference (at §27) to the fact that Ms Tabbasam had been easy to find all along, because she had been registered for council tax all along at her home address. The context for this comment was the distinction drawn at the start of that paragraph between landlords who deliberately evade service and those who simply fail to update their address. It was a reinforcement of the point that Ms Tabbasam fell into the second group. There was no error of law in relying on this point. Nor do I accept that it was a fact that was unsupported by evidence. I do not read the judge as purporting to reach a conclusion as to how the Council in fact located Ms Tabbasam at Kedlestone Avenue. She was merely making the point that they ultimately did so for the purposes of enforcement. That was relevant to the point that she was not deliberately trying to evade service.[61]Ground 6 is that the judge erred in recognising a reasonable excuse defence of such broad scope that it creates an unacceptable degree of uncertainty for local authorities. This was a point expressly considered by the judge, at §34, where she made the point that service itself remains straightforward, and in a case such as this where a series of communications has gone unanswered, it “may be worth a little further checking”. Again, Mr Whatley cannot point to any error of law. As Mr Calzavara and Mr Rowan observed, the only uncertainty a Council faces is as to whether a defendant could make out a reasonable excuse defence, but that will always be the case. A local authority’s position will necessarily be reactive to matters relied on by a landlord who raises a defence, and the matters relied on will usually be outside the Council’s knowledge.[62]For the above reasons, I would dismiss this appeal.

Postscript: pro bono assistance

[63]This appeal first came on for hearing in March 2025. It was adjourned to enable Ms Tabbasam the opportunity to obtain the assistance of an interpreter and, if possible, pro bono representation.[64]An interpreter was subsequently provided but, a week before the adjourned hearing, it became apparent that for whatever reason Ms Tabbasam had not been able to find legal representation. The Court itself then made contact with the bar’s pro bono charity, Advocate.[65]The Court is extremely grateful to Advocate who were able, notwithstanding the limited time, to find representation for Ms Tabbasam at the hearing. The point raised by the appeal was undoubtedly of great importance to Ms Tabbasam, as well as of some wider importance, and the interests of justice were undoubtedly best served by having the issues properly explored in a full adversarial process.[66]The Court is equally grateful to Mr Calzavara and Mr Rowan who, despite being instructed only two days before the hearing, provided a skeleton argument of the highest quality and oral submissions to match. These were of great assistance to the Court, and have proved to be of significant benefit to Ms Tabbasam. This case demonstrates the enormous value to litigants and the courts of charities such as Advocate who provide free legal assistance for litigants in need of it, and of lawyers who are prepared to provide their services for free.[67]I agree.[68]I also agree. I particularly wish to echo Zacaroli LJ’s thanks to Advocate for its work in finding representation for Ms Tabbasam, and to Mr Calzavara and Mr Rowan both for stepping in and for providing the Court with significant assistance at a late stage. The Court is very grateful.