Mohammed Abid Zaman v Leeds City Council

A building may be both a house and an HMO for different purposes under the Housing Act 2004. The fact that a building is an HMO under section 254(4) does not prevent its individual dwellings from being treated as houses for Part 3 selective licensing. The statutory exclusion in section 85(1)(a) applies to HMOs to which Part 2 applies. It does not extend to an HMO which falls outside Part 2. The relevant Part 3 definition is that of a house, and the Act contains no language requiring a different result merely because the wider building is an HMO.

The appellant owned a converted building containing four residential units in an area designated for selective licensing under Part 3 of the Housing Act 2004. The building was accepted to be an HMO under section 254(4), but it was not an HMO to which Part 2 applied. Leeds City Council imposed a financial penalty for failure to licence each flat. The First-tier Tribunal upheld the penalties, holding that each unit was subject to selective licensing. The appeal concerned whether the building’s status as a section 254(4) HMO prevented its dwellings from separately being Part 3 houses.

1. Appeal dismissed. The First-tier Tribunal was entitled to uphold four financial penalties imposed for failure to licence the individual flats.
2. Under section 99 of the Housing Act 2004, a house may be a building or part of a building consisting of one or more dwellings. The statutory language permits both a wider building and individual flats within it to be Part 3 houses.
3. The Tribunal followed and applied Northumberland Mews Ltd v Thanet District Council [2022] UKUT 179 (LC), which established that individual dwellings may be licensed separately even where the wider building is also a Part 3 house. That decision could not properly be distinguished merely because the wider building was an HMO under section 254(4).
4. The structure of the Act supported that conclusion. Section 85(1)(a) expressly excludes from Part 3 an HMO to which Part 2 applies. Parliament had therefore addressed the exclusion of HMOs and had not provided that an HMO to which Part 2 does not apply changes the operation of Part 3.
5. Parts 2 and 3 establish different regimes. Part 2 concerns specified HMOs, whereas Part 3 concerns other accommodation and uses the definition of a house. The HMO tests in section 254 do not displace that Part 3 definition absent clear statutory language.
6. Article 5 of The Licensing of Houses in Multiple Occupation (Prescribed Description) (England) Order 2018 was a transitional provision concerning HMOs required to be licensed under Part 2. It did not affect the result because this building was not such an HMO.

• First-tier Tribunal (Property Chamber): upheld the financial penalty notices relating to the four flats.
• Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber): dismissed the appeal and upheld the FTT’s conclusion.