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11/12/25 3:00 pm
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Property lawyer David Smith has warned that delays in a recent licensing application reveal a “very poor state of administration” that could have broader consequences.
Smith’s concerns about the Courts and Tribunals Service’s ability to deal with cases post-May follow his application for an appeal against an HMO licensing decision to the London First Tier Tribunal (FTT) on 13th August which took more than three months to be acknowledged.
“Even if the government starts to actually measure FTT performance, they will only start counting time to deal with applications from the date the FTT registers them on their systems, they will therefore not capture the quarter year delay in starting to process these applications,” says Smith. “This is exactly the same issue as we see with the county courts just now and shows the very poor state of administration in the courts carries over into other parts of HMCTS.”
Smith, at Spector Constant & Williams, adds: “If the government is shown to keep landlords out of a fair market rent for extended periods simply because of bureaucratic ineffectiveness then it places itself at a very high risk of judicial review for breaching landlords’ rights under Article 1 of Protocol 1, ECHR.”
His recent Freedom of Information request revealed that the government has no idea how the Renters’ Rights Act will impact the tribunal that considers rent appeal cases. He found the Ministry of Justice doesn’t hold data on the average time it takes for the tribunal to consider, process and rule upon rent increase appeals.
From 1st May, every private renter will be able to challenge a proposed rent increase from their landlord which is above local market rates. However, at present, the only way of being certain if a rent increase is above market rates or not will be to take a case to the tribunal in the first place.
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