The local housing authority refused to grant or revoked licences for 36 houses that were owned or managed by one or other of the applicants, under either Part 2 or Part 3 of the Housing Act 2004. The first applicant was the mother of the third applicant, who was the sole director of the second applicant company. The applicants appealed to the First-tier Tribunal against the local authority’s decisions, contending that it had erred in law by improperly relying, as relevant evidence falling within section 66 of the 2004 Act, upon spent convictions of the first applicant and her husband as showing that the applicants were not “fit and proper persons” to hold a licence for the purposes of sections 64(3) and 88(3). The convictions related to the giving of false information and the forgery of gas safety certificates in relation to earlier licence applications. The applicants applied to strike out parts of the local authority’s pleadings and evidence on the appeal in so far as they contravened the protections for rehabilitated persons contained in section 4 of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974. The Upper Tribunal refused the application, holding that section 4(1)(a) of the 1974 Act did not render inadmissible evidence as to the conduct constituting an offence in respect of which there was a spent conviction.
On appeal by the applicants—
Held, appeal dismissed. The words of section 4(1) of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 as a matter of construction were clear and unambiguous. Subsection (1)(a), which was concerned with the admissibility of evidence, was, unlike subsection (1)(b), restricted in its scope and did not include any proscription in respect of evidence of conduct constituting any spent convictions. While, in proceedings before a judicial authority, paragraph (a) provided that evidence of the conviction and the process of prosecution and sentencing was inadmissible, paragraph (b) was concerned with disclosure and extended such protection so that a rehabilitated person could not be asked, nor was required to answer, questions about the conviction or circumstances ancillary thereto including conduct concerning the offence. The different words used in paragraph (a) and paragraph (b) were intended by the legislature to have different effects as regards the scope of the provisions was concerned, in that the admissibility prohibition in the former deliberately did not include evidence of conduct constituting the relevant offence. If the 1974 Act might have reversed the extension provided by the Civil Evidence Act 1968 so far as spent convictions was concerned, there was nothing to suggest that it intended to reverse the common law position by which evidence of misconduct that had founded a criminal charge and conviction was admissible in later civil proceedings. The Upper Tribunal had reached the correct conclusion and for the right reasons (paras 36–38, 40, 46, 48, 54).
Per curiam. A local housing authority’s consideration and determination of a grant or revocation of a licence under Part 2 or 3 of the Housing Act 2004 involves “proceedings before a judicial authority” for the purposes of sections 4 and 7(3) of the 1974 Act, so that such an authority has the power under section 7(3) to disapply section 4(1) and admit evidence of a spent conviction if it is satisfied that justice cannot be done without admitting that evidence (paras 53, 54).
Justin Bates and Nicholas Grant (instructed by Anthony Gold Solicitors) for the applicants.
Ashley Underwood QC and Riccardo Calzavara (instructed by Head of Governance and Law, Waltham Forest London Borough Council) for the local authority.