Park Lane Properties (Leeds) Ltd., R (on the application of) v Northern Rent Assessment Panel

A rent assessment committee determining market rent under section 22(3) of the Housing Act 1988 may use its members’ local knowledge together with the evidence and submissions before it. It must assess the evidence overall, including the quality and comparability of market evidence, rather than treating asking rents as achieved rents. Procedural fairness requires disclosure of a genuinely new point which may take a party by surprise, but no further opportunity is required where the issue was already clear and debated. Adequate reasons may emerge from the reasons read as a whole; the committee need not explain every step arithmetically if the evidential basis of its valuation is apparent.

The landlord challenged a decision of the Northern Rent Assessment Committee concerning rent payable under an assured shorthold tenancy of a student property in Leeds. The committee determined under section 22 of the Housing Act 1988 that the reasonable rent was £52.50 per person per week, rather than the contractual rent of £58.50.

The appeal lay to the High Court under section 11 of the Tribunals and Inquiries Act 1992 on a point of law. The landlord alleged misunderstanding of comparables, impermissible reliance on local knowledge, procedural unfairness and inadequate reasons.

1. Appeal dismissed. The committee’s decision was not shown to disclose a point of law within section 11 of the Tribunals and Inquiries Act 1992.
2. The committee was entitled to consider rents sought for the forthcoming academic year, while determining the rent reasonably obtainable for the relevant tenancy year. Advertised rents were relevant, but did not necessarily establish rents actually achieved. The committee was also entitled to take account of differences between the comparables and the subject property, and of selective searches which excluded lower-priced properties.
3. The committee properly considered the totality of the evidence. Its reference to its members’ general knowledge of local market rents did not show that it had disregarded the parties’ evidence. Such local knowledge was permissible in the informal statutory context, consistently with Crofton Investment Trust Ltd v Greater London Rent Assessment Committee [1967] 2 All ER 1103.
4. Procedural fairness did not require the committee to put further matters to the landlord. The comparables, their limitations and the relevance of local market knowledge were already the subject of the hearing. The principle that a genuinely new and surprising point should be disclosed did not apply.
5. The committee gave sufficient reasons. Although the final valuation was stated succinctly, its basis was apparent from the detailed description of the property, the consideration of both parties’ comparables, the reservations about that evidence and the committee’s local knowledge. The case was materially different from Northumberland and Durham Property Trust Ltd v Chairman of the London Rent Assessment Committee (1998) 30 HLR 1091, where the valuation had effectively been given without reasoned justification.
6. The appellant was ordered to pay the respondent’s agreed costs of £4,437.50 within 28 days.

The committee determined the tenants’ application on 11 February 2003 and provided supplementary reasons on 21 March 2003. The High Court dismissed the landlord’s appeal under section 11 of the Tribunals and Inquiries Act 1992.