Treeborn
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15 Posts
Hi,
I have read that for a NEW HMO Licence to be deemed 'Duly Served' on the council - in the eyes of a Judge, two things need to happen with an application.
1) The application form must be received by the Council (and evidenced as being sent), with preferably a receipt from the council acknowledging it has been received sent to the sender, this could be in the form of an Auto Responder from the councils email server, or a direct personal email from the Licencing Departments Staff - but in essence as long as it is received by the council that is satisfactory.
2) The Council must receive payment for the Application, and when payment is made a receipt sent to the sender/payer/applicant to confirm receipt of this payment.
Both these things need to happen for the application to be deemed as 'Duly Made', particularly the paymen
My current HMO Licence expires this Sunday 17th, the councils email server has confirmed receipt of the application via an autorepsonder email sent back to myself.
I have chased the Licencing department to take payment, but they have advised:
We register the date we received your Renewal application, the fact that we have not processed your application or collected payment of the first fee is not relevant to the validity of your application.
We will contact you by email/phone as soon as we are ready to collect payment.
Is a Renewal then different from a New Application in regards to it being Duly Served, ie payment does not need to be taken ?
I understand that once a New application is Duly Served on the Council - you become immune from fine, prosecution or RROs, - with a Draft Licence issued, with conditions that need to be complied with - then the Full Licence is actually issued, assuming conditions and criteria have been met.
Obviously I do not want my current Licence to expire on 17th, and then be seen to be Unlicenced, which would expose myself to all the harshnesh that the system could, if it wanted meter out.
In your opinion would the email sent confirming no payment is required, or indeed that the application needs to be 'Validated' stand in court, if it was ever needed ?
As an aside, having never been to court for any housing or other money or property related issues, it just leaves one in the dark as to how a Judge is likely to act, it would be helpful if there was a Public Gallery, or to have hearings recorded, so we could see and get a feeling for the inner workings, instead it seems to me kept behind a screen, a dark art. I am informed that nothing like this exists for housing related court cases. ~
I thought our legal system was supposed to be transparent.
Is this something that could be put forward as an idea, ie the recording of housing related hearings.
