There has been an interesting post from solicitor David Smith on LinkedIn where he warns that notices served by Local Authorities (for example, civil penalty notices) can be served by email.
Further, it will be valid service, even if the landlord has never seen it, and so the fact that the landlord has not seen it cannot be used as a reason for failing to respond.
This means that if landlords don’t spot the emailed notice, they may find that they are out of time for challenging notices or bringing an appeal
Which is a worrying prospect.
How can landlords protect their position?
Here are some suggestions:
- Be careful to monitor your email so you don’t miss anything
- ‘Whitelist’ local authority emails so they won’t get sent to spam, and
- Check your spam folder regularly, and/or
- Maybe ask Local Authorities not to contact you by email at all (if you are given an option), so the problem does not arise
This last might sometimes be the safest option, as one of the people commenting on David’s post pointed out, email sometimes does not even reach the recipients’ spam folder.
For example, this can happen due to technical issues such as email authentication problems (e.g. DKIM errors). Although one would hope that Local Authorities have set up their email authentication correctly.
What about fraudulent notices?
However, thinking about this recently, it occurred to me that failing to receive valid notices from Local Authorities is not going to be the only problem. Receiving fraudulent notices could also become an issue.
Fraudulent notices, for example dupeing landlords into making payments or releasing private information, which can then be used for identity theft.
This could perhaps become a ‘thing’ if the forthcoming landlords database (due to come into force some time before 2029) publishes landlords’ contact details, including emails. So hopefully, landlords’ contact details will be kept private.
How do you spot a fraudulent email?
There are various ways to do this:
- Check that the sender’s email is correct. A Gmail address of random characters is not going to be a real Local Authority email address!
- Be suspicious of requests for payment or bank details, and
- Poor spelling or unusual wording, or
- Messages that differ (for example, in layout or design) from previous emails from the organisation.
- You should also be very wary of clicking links or opening attachments from suspicious senders, as they could infect your computer.
And finally
I’m concerned, as are most people who have read David’s post, about emails from Local Authorities serving notices going astray or just not reaching landlords who are then treated as if they have ignored them.
I’m also concerned about the increased opportunity this will offer to fraudsters to dupe landlords into making payments or releasing private information.
Finally, let us hope that the forthcoming landlords database keeps landlords’ contact details securely and does not offer spammers and criminals additional scope for their work.
Addendum – a new case
We may all have been worrying a bit too much about this as in a new case, Manchester City Council v Tabbasam (reported here), a Local Authority served an improvement notice, and subsequently a penalty notice to a landlord was sent to the wrong address.
When the landlord found out about it (after the Local Authority finally contacted her at the correct address), the landlord appealed against the notice to the First Tier Tribunal.
Her appeal to the First Tier Tribunal was rejected, but in a subsequent appeal to the Upper Tribunal, she was successful. The Court of Appeal dismissed an appeal against this by the Local Authority.
This case involved service at the wrong physical address, rather than email service. However, it does show that where service is defective, landlords may still have grounds to challenge enforcement action.
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