Sinclair Gardens Investments (Kensington) Ltd. v Lands Tribunal

A refusal by the Lands Tribunal of permission to appeal from a leasehold valuation tribunal is not appealable to the Court of Appeal under section 3(4) of the Lands Tribunal Act 1949. The statutory scheme provides a limited route of challenge by judicial review.

Although judicial-review jurisdiction exists, it should be exercised only in exceptional circumstances, such as narrow jurisdictional error or procedural unfairness amounting to a denial of a fair hearing. Judicial review must not become a means of re-arguing the merits or bypassing the specialist statutory scheme.

The claimant landlord challenged the Lands Tribunal’s refusal of permission to appeal against a Leasehold Valuation Tribunal decision disallowing various service-charge costs. The issues were whether the refusal was appealable to the Court of Appeal under section 3(4) of the Lands Tribunal Act 1949 and, if not, whether it was susceptible to judicial review for unreasonableness or jurisdictional error.

The court considered the statutory scheme governing service-charge disputes under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 and the approach in R(Sivasubramaniam) v Wandsworth County Court [2003] 1 WLR 475.

1. A refusal of permission to appeal is a special kind of decision which is final and unappealable unless legislation expressly provides otherwise. Treating it as appealable would defeat the statutory purpose of preventing unnecessary appeals. The court followed Lane v Esdaile [1891] AC 210, In the matter of the Housing of the Working Classes Act 1890 Ex parte Stevenson [1892] 1 QB 609 and Bland v Chief Supplementary Benefit Officer [1983] 1 WLR 262.
2. The Administrative Court retained jurisdiction to review a decision of the Lands Tribunal to grant or refuse permission under section 31A(6) of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. Applying R(Sivasubramaniam) v Wandsworth County Court [2003] 1 WLR 475, that jurisdiction should be exercised only in exceptional circumstances, including narrow jurisdictional error or procedural irregularity denying a fair hearing.
3. The statutory scheme was intended to provide a simple, expeditious and inexpensive specialist process. The absence of an automatic oral hearing and the Lands Tribunal’s mixed legal and valuation membership did not justify a different approach.
4. A test based on a gross and obvious error of law would undermine the scheme because deciding whether an error met that description would commonly require a merits review. The claimant’s complaints sought to re-argue factual, legal and valuation issues decided by the LVT.
5. The claim was dismissed because no exceptional circumstances existed.

This was a first-instance judicial review claim. The judgment under challenge was the Lands Tribunal’s refusal of permission to appeal dated 2 December 2003. The Administrative Court dismissed the claim.