A landlord has won an HMO case against a council by appealing an erroneous First Tier Tribunal (FTT) ruling. The case involved Cornwall Council which fined a landlord, Richard O’Halloran, £15,000 for operating an unlicensed HMO. The council claimed that there were multiple persons living at the property, but they had no evidence an alleged additional tenant; they did not meet them, nor did they see the person's name on a tenancy agreement. In fact, they didn't even have the full name of the mystery tenant and based their case on hearsay that someone called Amanda was also living at the property!

Astonishingly the FTT accepted this lack of evidence and ruled in the council's favour, although they did reduce the fine to £7,500. The landlord rightly appealed to the Upper Tribunal who saw through the FTT's mis-judgement and ruled in the landlord's favour, citing the clear lack of evidence.

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