31^st Dec 2018

Nottingham City Council has been heavily criticised for 'blowing' £95,000 of tax payers' money after taking a landlord to the Supreme Court and losing its appeal.

The council had originally lost a case against a landlord as it believed two of their student bedrooms were below the minimum size regulations, however undeterred it launched an appeal against the ruling.

At the next hearing a judge also decided to rule in the landlord's favour, but once again the City Council was not prepared to accept the verdict by taking the case to the Court of Appeal and then the Supreme Court, which in turn they lost.

According to The Freedom of Information disclosure, the council total costs for their ill fated endeavours amounted to £95,742, which included £86,990 in legal costs for the court cases between November 2014 and October 2018, £7,347 on staff and £1,405 on travel.

Speaking to the press, Giles Inman, business development manager for one of the landlord groups in Nottingham, said: “In these times of austerity we are told the council does not have any money for this or that but they do for a nonsense case.

“If you go to a tribunal and you lose, okay, you appeal again at an upper tribunal but then you would give up.

“But they went to the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court and lost. It is just shocking.

“It is public money. When you look at the costs it is astonishing. We fell off our chairs when we saw how much. I have never come across something like this before.”

The council attempted to take the landlord to task over two attic conversions in his properties which had been converted into bedrooms, believing they did not meet the legislated minimum room size of 8sqm.

The court disagreed with the council and ruled that the two rooms were of adequate size to be used as bedrooms.

Councillor Linda Woodings, portfolio holder for housing and planning at Nottingham City Council, said: “We believe as a matter of principle and fairness that there should be a minimum acceptable bedroom size that applies to everyone.

“We were therefore disappointed with the Supreme Court ruling because in effect, it means one group of people are being forced to accept a lower standard of accommodation than others.

“There is a real concern that this could be the thin end of the wedge and that the same interpretation could be applied to other minimum standards for HMOs such as the number and size of bathroom or kitchen facilities.

“The Supreme Court ruling is based on the law as it stands but the Government supported the council’s appeal so we hope it will seriously consider revising the existing legislation to end this unfair anomaly.

“We felt strongly that there was a significant issue of unfairness at stake, which meant that tenants living in shared accommodation were at risk of suffering poorer quality housing than someone living in exactly the same house but on a separate tenancy.

“We aim to achieve quality housing for all, not just some, which is why we were prepared to take this case through the courts and had support from Government on our position, so it’s disappointing the Supreme Court ruled as it did.”


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