Court of Appeal confirms non-receipt of a housing improvement notice can constitute reasonable excuse for non-compliance in Manchester City Council v Tabbasam
The Court of Appeal has dismissed Manchester City Council's appeal in Manchester City Council v Naila Tabbasam [2026] EWCA Civ 361, confirming that a landlord's failure to receive an improvement notice — even where service was technically valid — can constitute a 'reasonable excuse' for non-compliance under s.30(4) of the Housing Act 2004. Lord Justice Zacaroli, with whom Lord Justice Dove and Lady Justice Falk agreed, upheld the First-tier Tribunal's finding in favour of Ms Tabbasam. The Court applied the well-established reasonable excuse framework from Perrin v HMRC [UKUT 156 (TCC)], as endorsed by the Court of Appeal in Archer v Revenue and Customs Commissioners [EWCA Civ 626]. The judgment draws a clear doctrinal distinction between two separate questions: first, whether service of the notice was valid under s.233 of the Local Government Act 1972 (a question with a straightforward answer — it was); and second, whether the landlord had a reasonable excuse for non-compliance (a separate assessment on its own facts). The Court held that valid service and absence of reasonable excuse are independent issues, each requiring its own analysis. The decision has practical implications for local authorities pursuing landlord enforcement. Where a series of communications goes unanswered, the Court indicated that some further checking by the enforcement authority may be warranted before treating non-response as deliberate evasion. The judgment also reaffirms that deliberately evasive landlords are treated differently from those who simply have not updated their contact details.
Why this matters
This judgment clarifies the Housing Act 2004 enforcement framework at a time when local authorities are under political pressure to act against non-compliant landlords. The distinction between valid service and reasonable excuse is commercially significant: it means a technically correct notice can still fail to generate enforceable liability if the landlord genuinely did not receive it. For social housing and property litigation practices, this creates a template for defending enforcement actions on reasonable excuse grounds. For local authority clients, it signals the need for more robust service processes — particularly where landlords are known to have changed addresses. The ruling also has broader resonance for any regulatory enforcement context where service of notices is a precondition of liability.
On the Ground
A trainee on a housing enforcement dispute would prepare the chronology of all communications between the local authority and the landlord — a key document in establishing whether the authority took sufficient steps to verify receipt — and assist with witness statement bundles pulling together correspondence, service records, and council enforcement logs for use at tribunal.
Interview prep
Soundbite
Valid service no longer guarantees enforceable liability — Tabbasam forces local authorities to rethink their landlord enforcement playbooks entirely.
Question you might get
“How does the Court of Appeal's reasoning in Tabbasam affect the way a local authority should approach service of an improvement notice to ensure it can resist a reasonable excuse defence?”
Full answer
The Court of Appeal in Tabbasam confirmed that a landlord who never received an improvement notice can raise reasonable excuse as a defence under the Housing Act 2004, even where service was technically valid. This matters because it creates a meaningful gap between technical legal compliance and practical enforceability for local authority landlord enforcement programmes. The wider picture is a tension between the government's drive to enforce housing standards and the courts' protection of procedural fairness for individual respondents. This connects to the broader principle from Perrin v HMRC — now imported into housing law — that objective reasonableness is assessed on the specific facts of each landlord's situation. This will prompt local authorities to invest in more robust service verification protocols, particularly for absentee or portfolio landlords.
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