Hanson v London Rent Assessment Committee and another; R v London Rent Assessment Committee ex parte Hanson

An application for a fair rent to be fixed cannot be withdrawn once the matter has been referred to the rent assessment committee This was an application by Mr John Hanson, of 21 Bramerton Street, London SW3, for an order of certiorari to bring up and quash a decision of the first respondents, a London Rent Assessment Committee of the London Rent Assessment Panel, fixing a fair rent for 21 Bramerton Street, owned by the second respondents, the Church Commissioners for England, at £900 per annum exclusive of rates. The applicant also appealed against the committee’s decision. Mr G F Hastings (instructed by Lorenz & Jones) appeared for the applicant; Mr H K Woolf (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) for the first respondents; and Mr R Moshi (instructed by Radcliffes & Co) for the second respondents. Giving judgment, LORD WIDGERY said: In these proceedings Mr Hastings moves for an order of certiorari to bring up into this court with a view to its being quashed a decision made by a London Rent Assessment Committee on September 7 1974 whereby it fixed as a fair rent for premises known as 21 Bramerton Street, Chelsea, a rent of £900 per annum exclusive of rates. The applicant today is the tenant of 21 Bramerton Street, and his name is John Hanson. It is he who moves for the order of certiorari to quash the decision of the rent assessment committee. The landlords of the premises are the Church Commissioners, and they of course are concerned with the proceedings as the recipients of whatever rent is in due course determined as the fair rent. The facts of this case, so far as relevant, are extremely limited in scope and quantity. The Rent Act 1968, amongst other activities, provides for the fixing of a fair rent of residential property in certain circumstances, and the method which is adopted in the relevant part of the Act of 1968 is the appointment of officials known as rent officers, who, on application from landlords or tenants, or now the local authority, fix what they regard as a fair rent for the premises in question. If either the landlord or the tenant, or any other interested party, is dissatisfied with the rent so fixed, the Act provides for the issue to be referred to a body called a rent assessment committee whose duty it is officially to determine the fair rent. All that had happened in this case. The premises, as I have said, were let to Mr Hanson by the Church Commissioners. The Church Commissioners approached the rent officer asking him to determine the fair rent for the premises, and the rent officer determined a fair rent of £800 a year. The tenant (the present applicant for certiorari), being dissatisfied with that determination, objected to it, and as a result required the matter to be determined by a rent assessment committee, as I have endeavoured to explain. It is appropriate at this point to look a little more closely at the provisions of the Act which bring about that consequence, and they are conveniently collected in Schedule 6 of the Rent Act 1968, where one has a simple and clear code of conduct which is laid down for persons concerned with the provisions to which I have referred. I do not take time by looking at the procedure of applications to a rent officer which occupy the first four paragraphs of Schedule 6. One comes to the action which has to be taken by persons dissatisfied with the rent officer’s conclusion when paragraph 5 of Schedule 6 is reached. That provides: ‘After considering, in accordance with paragraph 4 above, what rent ought to be registered or, as the case may be, whether a different rent ought to be registered’–and then there is an important provision–he is required to ‘notify the landlord and the tenant accordingly by a notice stating that if, within twenty-eight days of the service of the notice or such longer period as he or a rent assessment committee may allow, an objection in writing is received by the rent officer from the landlord or the tenant the matter will be referred to a rent assessment committee.’  So, following the decision of the rent officer, both parties are told what that decision is and told that unless objection is made within twenty-eight days that rent will be confirmed. The schedule goes on in paragraph 6 to describe what would happen if objection is taken. It is laid down there that: ‘If such an objection as is mentioned in paragraph 5 above is received, then (a) if it is received within the period of twenty-eight days specified in that paragraph or a rent assessment committee so direct, the rent officer shall refer the matter to a rent assessment committee’–an important sentence, in my view, because it is clearly mandatory and it says in the plainest terms that if either of the parties to the contract makes objection within twenty-eight days, the rent officer shall refer the matter to the rent assessment committee. When we get on to paragraph 7 of the schedule we are told what happens when the matter is so referred. Paragraph 7 requires the rent assessment committee to give the sort of notice which one would expect in cases of this kind, and if either of the parties wants an oral hearing, it is provided in paragraph 8 that the rent assessment committee shall set up an oral hearing accordingly. When all that has been done, and when the rent assessment committee has made such inquiries as they think fit, their duty is to be found in paragraph 9 of the schedule in these terms: ‘The committee shall make such inquiry, if any, as they think fit and consider any information supplied or representation made to them in pursuance of paragraph 7 or paragraph 8 above, and (a) if it appears to them that the rent registered or confirmed by the rent officer is a fair rent, they shall confirm that rent; (b) if it does not appear to them that that rent is a fair rent, they shall determine a fair rent for the dwelling-house.’  Again there is no room for choice, options or doubt. The duties of the committee are clearly laid down once the matter has been referred to them. They must conduct such inquiries as the schedule provides for, and then come up with a fair rent, either by confirmation of the rent fixed by the rent officer or by the exercise of their own judgment. As I have already indicated, in this case the landlords approached the rent officer and obtained an assessment of the fair rent from him. The parties, including the present applicant, who was the tenant, were notified of what had happened, and within twenty-eight days an objection was raised by the tenant to the rent assessed by the rent officer, which I remind myself again was £800 per year. Notice was given to the rent assessment committee that an oral hearing was required. A date was fixed for the oral hearing, August 15 1974. Everything was prepared for the committee to hear the parties and then proceed in accordance with its duty to fix a fair rent. But a few days before August 15 1974 the present applicant, Mr Hanson, evidently began to doubt the wisdom of the course which he had adopted. He was advised by well-known surveyors in this matter, and reading between the lines, one is driven to the conclusion that, if one may use the vernacular, he was getting cold feet and was not at all sure that it was in his interest to go on with this matter. So eventually he told his surveyors on August 8 to make arrangements to withdraw his objection. On August 8 a letter was written by the advisers of the tenant to the rent assessment panel in these terms: Dear Sirs, No 21 Bramerton Street: Objection to rent assessment. We write following our telephone conversation of this morning. Acting on behalf of Mr Hanson of the above address, we confirm that we shall not be placing our objection before the London Rent Assessment Panel on Thursday August 15. There is evidence which indicates how that letter came to be written. The evidence, which I think we should accept at this stage, because it is not contradicted, is to the effect that the surveyors acting for the applicant telephoned to the rent assessment committee to ask what the procedure would be if the applicant wished to withdraw his objection to the rent officer’s figure. The evidence is that they were told that a letter of withdrawal would be sufficient, and in some way the phraseology similar to that in the letter which I have read seems to have been mentioned and approved. I say ‘in some way,’ because I am far from satisfied that this letter was actually composed in the office of the rent assessment panel. But that a clerical officer employed in that office gave some assistance to the compilation of the letter is not seriously in dispute, and so the letter went off. It will be remembered that August 15 was the date fixed for the hearing of this matter before the panel. August 15 duly arrived, and the panel were informed that the office had received the letter of August 8 which I have read. The panel took the view that the phraseology was ambiguous; it was not altogether clear whether the applicant was abandoning all interest in the matter or whether he was merely saying he would not come in person and hoped that the committee would look after his interests in his absence, or something like that. To cut a long story short, the committee decided that they should not act on the letter of August 8 but should hear the matter. Since the tenant was not present, hearing the matter on his side did not include hearing any evidence from him. After the hearing stage in the morning of August 15, the committee moved on, as is their practice, to look at the house and inspect it. When they got to the house they could not get in because they were told that Mr Hanson’s objection had been withdrawn and there was no further matter which concerned them about this house. Some confusion followed as a result of that, and eventually the committee went away. They did however fix a fair rent, and they fixed a fair rent at £900 a year, and it is the fact that that exceeded what the rent officer himself fixed, which rent the applicant reluctantly might have been prepared to pay, and that is the cause of our being here today dealing with this particular dispute. The way in which it is put is two-fold. It is submitted by Mr Hastings on behalf of the applicant that there is power for someone who has objected and set the wheels of Schedule 6 in motion to withdraw his objection and thus resile from the battle, as it were, leaving the matter as though he had never objected at all. If that is the law, as Mr Hastings submits it is, then it would follow, he says, that upon the writing of the letter of August 8 1974 Mr Hanson’s objection was withdrawn, his liability to have his rent increased if the panel so thought was also nullified, and he was left in a position as though he had never made any objection at all. That is the argument on the applicant’s side, and it is said that if that is right, there are two consequences which follow. The first is that the panel lacked jurisdiction when it eventually proceeded to fix the rent as it did. Alternatively, I think it is said that there was a denial of natural justice, in that Mr Hanson did not in the event have an opportunity of making oral representations to the panel. The central and vital fact in this dispute is whether there is a right for an objector to withdraw his objection, and if so, what the consequences of that withdrawal may be. I approach this problem on the footing that in general, where you have a statutory procedure of this kind which involves the making of objections or applications, in general a person who makes an objection or an application should have the right to withdraw if he can do so without prejudicing other interested parties. I think that considerable support for that general proposition is to be found in the case of Boal Quay Wharfingers Ltd v King’s Lynn Conservancy Board [1971] 1 WLR 1558. The passage which illustrates the point that I am now seeking to make is to be found in the judgment of Salmon LJ at page 1569 where he referred to the Rent Act, although to a different part of it than that with which we are concerned, and said this: ‘The Rent Act 1968 contains an example of such a statutory provision’–that is to say a provision for actual withdrawal. He continued: ‘The Landlord and Tenant (Rent Control) Act of 1949, however, contained no such provision; and in R v Hampstead & St Pancras Rent Tribunal, ex parte Goodman [1951] 1 KB 541 the court held that since there was nothing in that Act to prevent an application being withdrawn, it could be withdrawn at any time. That I think is an authority for the view I have expressed.’  I respectfully agree with what 80 Salmon LJ says, and I start with the assumption that if the existence of a right of withdrawal can march in double harness with the protection of other parties concerned, then the right of withdrawal ought to be there. But I do not think in this case that it is possible to say that a withdrawal, at all events once the matter is before the committee, can be made without a possible prejudice to other parties. I am impressed by the fact that other parts of the Rent Act 1968, such as those referred to by Salmon LJ, do specifically contemplate withdrawal of an application in certain circumstances. The part we are concerned with contains no such provision at all. Furthermore, the issue which arises when application is made to a rent officer to fix a fair rent is not a matter which is simply inter partes and simply concerns the landlord and tenant at the moment when the issue arises. The effect of the fixing of a fair rent is that the rent is fixed in rem, as Lord Parker put it in one of his judgments, for others who come as landlord or tenant thereafter. It is not, I think, consistent with the general policy of the Act, or indeed with the purpose enshrined in Schedule 6 which I have read, that there should be any kind of unlimited right for a person, who has by objection set the machinery in motion, to decide to withdraw his objection and thus as it were reverse the machinery to a position which it formerly occupied. I think it is just possible that there may be a right of withdrawal for an objector if he withdraws before the matter has been referred to the rent assessment committee. He has to be very quick if he is going to withdraw before that happens. I would not decide it today because the point does not arise directly here, but it may very well be that there is an unlimited right of withdrawal of objection up to the point when the matter is actually referred to the rent assessment committee, but thereafter in my judgment there is no general right of withdrawal at all; that is to say there is no means whereby on a so-called withdrawal the party can extricate himself and put himself in the position as though he had never lodged an objection at all. Again, as this branch of the law develops, it may be that other consequences will be found to flow from a purported withdrawal. It may be that it will be right to say–and here again, another day will be the day to say it–that a purported withdrawal excuses the rent assessment committee from providing an oral hearing for which the withdrawer had previously opted, and there may be many requirements of that kind whereby following a purported withdrawal the procedure can be somewhat streamlined and made the more effective, and a decision obtained more quickly. But what I am quite satisfied about, speaking for myself, is that once the matter has been referred to the rent assessment committee the rent assessment committee must produce an answer in the terms of a fair rent, and no attempted withdrawal or any other manoeuvres on the part of the parties can avoid the obligation on the rent assessment committee to come up with a fair rent, doing its own assessment of what is a fair rent for the premises. It is in my view, therefore, on the facts of this case, whatever construction one puts on the letter of August 8 1974, that in so far as it was intended to be or purported to be a withdrawal of the objection, it was ineffective for that purpose. It was much too late for any such withdrawal to be of effect at all, and therefore the committee were entirely within their jurisdiction in hearing the application on the morning of August 15, as in fact they did. Furthermore, the fact that they had jurisdiction, and the fact that the withdrawal was ineffectual, as I have described, means that no error of law can be found in the committee’s findings, and that is relevant because, although I am not sure whether I have mentioned it in the course of this judgment heretofore, apart from the application for certiorari, there is an appeal against the rent assessment panel’s decision brought under the Tribunals and Inquiries Act. That appeal in my judgment must be dismissed, because for the reasons which I hope I have made clear there is in my view no error of judgment discernible in the decision of the committee. There remains of course the application for certiorari, and all I find it necessary to say about that is that it was brought far too late to justify consideration in this case at all. The decision of the rent assessment committee was dated September 7 1974, and the motion for leave to quash it by certiorari is dated July 25 1975, or something like nine months later, which, as the Court of Appeal emphasised only last week, is much too long for any ordinary certiorari application and would be fatal in this case, in my judgment, to the application of the prerogative order. For those reasons I would refuse these applications. PARK J: I agree. MAY J: I also agree.