Collins v Murray and another

Rent Act 1977 — Appeal from decision of rent assessment committee — Committee reduced rent officer’s assessment — Complaint by landlord that committee’s reasons were inadequate — Committee’s decision, on landlord’s submission, did not indicate that they had taken into account, inter alia, the lapse of time since the date of the rent officer’s assessment; two premises alleged by the landlord to be comparable; official statistics of the rise of registered unfurnished rents during 1970-80; a published report of the result of the Department of Environment’s ‘Beacon Exercise’ showing the rates of return on capital in different types of accommodation; and his submission that rents determined by rent officers and committees in the London area were unrealistically low — Held, dismissing appeal, that the appellant had not established that committee’s reasons were insufficient — Decision of same judge in Waddington v Surrey and Sussex Rent Assessment Committee distinguished on the ground that in that case there were very specific comparables which the committee in question had not appeared to consider — In the present case there was no such ‘hard evidence’ — Committee had considered the premises with great care and their reasons met the requirements of the legislation — Appellant’s submissions were really general submissions that rents, particularly in the London area, were too low These were statutory appeals by the landlord, Ronald Nelson Collins, against decisions of a rent assessment committee of the London Rent Assessment Panel. The appellant, however, did not proceed with one of the appeals, relating to a Mr Barrett. The other appeal was against the committee’s decision in relation to a bed-sitting-room occupied by Mrs Gladys Murray in Digby Mansions, Beryl Road, London W6. The appellant appeared in person; the respondents were not present or represented. Giving judgment, STEPHEN BROWN J said: This is an appeal by Mr Ronald Nelson Collins against decisions of the London Rent Assessment Panel of May 10 1982 in relation to two tenanted rooms in a building known as Digby Mansions which Mr Collins tells the court he bought on September 1 1981. I say it is an appeal against two of the determinations of the London Rent Assessment Panel, but Mr Collins has indicated, and indeed he did so at a very early stage when he filed an affidavit in this matter, that he only proposed to proceed in respect of one of these tenancies. That related to the room occupied by a tenant called Mrs G Murray. He does not proceed in relation to his appeal concerning the other room tenanted by a Mr Barrett. Accordingly, I must formally dismiss that appeal. Digby Mansions is a building containing what Mr Collins describes as 10 flats. The rent officer’s registration document, RNC/5, describes the property as being a ‘five-storey corner mansion block of flats arranged in six sections with a common entrance and stairwell to the centre of each section. Angled bays to the front elevations. Stone stairways to common parts and suspended timber floors to the individual flats. Sash-hung windows.’  The accommodation in fact in this particular instance is a bed-sitting-room, although it is described as a flat. This is a bed-sitting-room on the ground floor and the room is described in RNC/5 and there is annexed to it a plan which indicates its location. The rent officer had assessed the fair rent on January 5 1982 at £10 per week, exclusive of rates. In addition there was an amount for furniture, apparently of 50p per week. The tenant, Mrs Murray, appealed against that assessment and that appeal was heard by the London Rent Assessment Panel on May 7 1982. The rent assessment committee heard evidence and heard Mr Collins’ submissions. They had before them the rent officer’s registration document with the description of the premises; and Mr Collins tells me, and I accept it, that the committee inspected the premises and that he drew the committee’s attention to a number of features. In particular one matter was that the Ascot heater in the bathroom was in fact in working order and he contrasted that fact at the date of the inspection with the recorded information in the rent officer’s registration document that only the cold-water tap to the bath functioned, the inference being that at the stage when he inspected it and assessed the rent there was no hot water there. His description of it had included a description of the arrangement of the premises. He had noted that the room was in a particularly bad state, and that at inspection the tenant had five cats in the room. Mrs Murray’s notice of appeal, which is to be found at p 11 of the documents that are before me, was a letter written to the rent officer in these terms: Dear Sir, I wish to appeal against the decision of your office to raise my rent to a total of £10.00 (plus 50 pence service charge) per week, as from January 5. The accommodation as supplied is one small room, with shared bathroom facilities — which I am unable to use because of my lack of mobility. The house is in a very poor condition and there remain structural defects in my room which the landlord refuses to repair, despite my requests and his legal obligations to carry out these repairs. The tenant, who is respondent to this appeal, is not present, neither is she represented at this hearing. Mr Collins submits that the committee wrongly reduced the rent officer’s assessment in pursuance of Mrs Murray’s appeal from £10 to £8 a week; they left undisturbed the rent officer’s assessed figure of 50 pence per week for furniture. The reasons for their decision are given in full on the second page of the document which is Exhibit RNC/7. They describe the premises, noting that: Digby Mansions, while in a potentially favourable position near the river, is in a fairly run-down area and the section owned by the applicant is badly neglected. At the time of the committee’s inspection there were pools of what was apparently waste water outside the window of Room 3, 21 Digby Mansions. The internal common parts of the block were not clean and this was also the case with the internal common parts of the flat which was let on a room by room basis. There was one wc and one bathroom for the use of six tenants. The room itself was quite small. It then dealt with another part of the premises which is not material to this appeal, as I understand it. They then set out the landlord’s contention, saying: 118 The landlord had advanced a general contention that all rents determined by rent asessment committees and rent officers were far too low and he considered that one way to determine a fair rent would be to take the rent of comparable premises and increase that by 50%. The committee did not accept these contentions, or the arithmetical calculations based on the capital values he placed on the flats. Their reasons go on to say: Mr Murray, the son of the tenant, said that the room was not fit to live in, but the committee thought that this was in part due to the advanced age of the tenant and to neglect by the tenant and those looking after her. There was however as had been mentioned a large amount of neglect by the landlord and there was no way in which the tenant could have arranged for the common parts either inside the flat or on the outside staircase and hall to be cleaned. The landlord had put forward two possible comparables but was not able to give enough details of these to enable the committee to derive any value from them. One of the comparables suggested was in Oakley Street, Chelsea, which was clearly a far more favourable position. Having regard to all the evidence put before them, to their inspection, to their knowledge and experience, and to the provisions of Section 70 of the Rent Act 1977, they reached the decisions which have already been notified to the parties. As I have indicated, in the material appeal the committee reduced the rent assessed by the rent officer of £10 a week to one of £8 a week. Mr Collins appeals against that determination and submits that it should be quashed and the matter remitted for further consideration, because he submits the reasons did not indicate that the committee had taken into account material matters. He submits, first, that basically where you have an experienced rent officer working in the area under review, it is a remarkable thing to reduce his assessment, and certainly to reduce it by as much as 20%. Furthermore, he submits that four months had elapsed since the rent officer had made that assessment and the committee had not apparently taken that period of time into account. He makes the point that he specifically drew the attention of the two members of the panel to the fact that the water heater was working and that they noted that. He said he brought to the attention of the committee two premises alleged to be comparable — 59 Avonmore Road, a furnished single room with shared facilities let at £15 a week (that being a rent registered by the rent officer on April 7 1982); and also 36 Blythe Road, a third-floor room let at £13.25 a week, that also being assessed by the rent officer. Mr Collins got those rents, he said, from the register at Hammersmith in the same district, but he apparently did not submit any further details of the premises other than that which was available from the register, although he says that he gave the details (that is, the addresses) to the rent officer and to the committee. He makes a particular complaint of the fact that the document, which is a table supplied by the Department of the Environment and exhibited as RNC/2 in his affidavit, was before the committee and he says that they chose to take no account of that. That is a document which shows the progress, if I may so call it, of the mean registered unfurnished rents during the period 1970 to the first half of 1980. The mean registered rents throughout the country, as I understand it, had increased certainly as much as, if not more than, the index of inflation and that of average earnings. Mr Collins says that the committee had not taken that into account. He also complains that on the same document there is a general comment from the Department of the Environment which sets out the basis of what should be the attitude of rent officers and rent assessment committees. That document says that it is an important consideration that the decision should be fair and be seen to be fair, that tribunals need to retain the confidence of both landlord and tenant, and the proceedings should be carried out fairly and impartially. In addition to that matter, Mr Collins submits that an article from ESTATES GAZETTE* which was before the committee contains an extract of the Department of the Environment investigation called the ‘Beacons Exercise’ and again he thinks that should have moved them to act in a way different from that in which they did act on this occasion. The ‘Beacons Exercise’ apparently was an exercise based upon the rate of return on the capital involved in what Mr Collins describes as ‘family-sized accommodation’. In fact the article shows that three hypothetical properties were taken as the subject of investigation — a mid-terrace, two-storey house built around 1870, a mid-terrace, two-storey house built around 1880 and a two-storey, semi-detached house built in the mid-1930s — and that showed a very low return in the London area of 2.9% which compared with 5.9 and 6% obtained in areas which are further north. Mr Collins submits that generally speaking that shows that rent officers and rent assessment committees, in the London area in particular, are unrealistically low in their assessments and determinations. He quite plainly feels that as a landlord he is in a position where he is prejudiced by an outlook which is not sympathetic to his situation. In his written submission to this court, he has made it plain that he did not really feel confidence in this rent assessment committee. He has not advanced at this hearing in detail matters which are set out in his affidavit in which he complained that he had not really been given a fair hearing; but I feel bound to say that the reasons for the decision and the fact that the committee visited the premises do not suggest that the committee failed to consider and to record his point of view. *Editor’s note: Rates of returns, scarfity, and the decline of privately rented housing, by John Doling and Mary Davies, May 1, 1982. p 415. Mr Collins complains in particular that the committee did not correct in their decision the fact that the hot water was working, specifically at the time of their inspection, although he had asked them to do so, and they had acknowledged they had noted that, but they did not actually put it in writing. He also complains that they should not have rejected or overlooked his general submissions on the rates of return on property let in the London area and he complains that the reduction of 20% on the rent officer’s assessment was strikingly at variance with the fact that in relation to two other appeals with which he was concerned on the same occasion the committee approved and endorsed the rent assessed by the rent officer. This court, of course, is not rehearing this matter and cannot substitute its view of the facts of the case for that of the assessment committee whose specific function it is to determine the facts. In considering the grounds of appeal the court has to consider the complaints made by the appellant and see whether this committee failed to give adequate reasons or proper reasons for their decision. It has to be borne in mind that this question of determining the fair rent is specifically within their purview; that it is their duty; and it is their duty to hear appeals, whether by landlord or by tenant, and to give a determination. I have carefully considered the points made by Mr Collins, but I am quite unable to find that the committee did not give sufficient reasons in this case. Mr Collins referred to a decision which was apparently a decision of mine sitting in this court in May 1982, relating to a property let in Herne Bay, Kent. That was a house. He has kindly and helpfully put before the court a copy of that decison in ESTATES GAZETTE*, but as the report shows (and it is my recollection, assisted by the report) the facts in that case were really very different from this case. There were, in that case, very specific comparables with full details which that assessment committee had not appeared to consider in the way one would expect, but in this case there is no such ‘hard evidence’, as I think I described it. *Editor’s note: Waddington v Surrey and Sussex Rent Assessment Committee (1982) 264 EG 717, [1982] 2 EGLR 107. Mr Collins’ submissions are really general submissions to the effect that rents are too low and, in particular, they are far too low in the London area. That is a matter which goes well beyond the facts of this particular case and it seems to me that really the fact that he finds he has no complaint of the rent assessment committee’s decision in two cases (of the three cases he had) rather suggests that this committee were not in any sense biased against him, but were basing their decision on their true and fair view of the particular case. It is clear from the reasons for their decision that they observed with great care the premises and the favourable position which the house itself occupies, but they took into account its state, which they described as being badly neglected. Also, quite plainly, they took into account, in Mr Collins’ favour, that many of the complaints which the tenant’s son had put forward were not to be laid at his door; that is to say, the committee expressed the view that the state of the room was in part due to the advanced age of the tenant and to neglect by the tenant and those looking after her and not to Mr Collins. It seems to me that their decision meets the requirements of the legislation, and in the circumstances I cannot find any ground for saying that it should be quashed or the appeal should be allowed. The appeal is therefore dismissed.