Or why a landlord who sends a locksmith to an occupied flat can still walk away from a rent repayment order.
The First-tier Tribunal published its decision in Keller & Fantini v City Accommodations Re Ltd (LON/00AG/HMB/2026/0001) on 9 September 2026. It was decided on 17 August 2026 by Judge N O’Brien and Mr S Mason FRICS. The application for a rent repayment order was dismissed. The reasoning repays a careful read, because on the tribunal’s own findings the applicants came very close indeed.
What happened
City Accommodations Re Ltd is a rent-to-rent operator. It held a 39-month lease of a three-bedroom flat in a modern block in NW1 from the owner, Mrs Mohammad, expiring on 13 September 2024, and had let the whole flat on an assured shorthold tenancy to Mr Keller and Mr Fantini rather than room by room.
As the lease ran out the owner decided not to renew, but was content for the tenants to stay on directly. The tenants agreed in principle to a new tenancy with her and told the company they would leave on 12 September. The company took the view that its own tenancy was protected under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 and would continue — and that neither the tenants nor the owner could go around it. It served a notice to quit expiring 8 September, followed by a solicitor’s letter.
On 10 September the company emailed to say that clients would be moving into two of the rooms, one of them the following day, and that if the flat was not vacant by noon on 12 September it would start eviction proceedings and seek compensation. On 6 September the owner had already changed the locks and given the tenants keys.
On 12 September the company’s employee attended with a locksmith. Mr Keller was inside. He heard the lock being dismantled and put the security chain on; the chain was cut with what he took to be an angle grinder. The lock was changed and he was handed two sets of keys. The employee then stationed himself in the corridor for several hours. At about 7.15pm a man arrived with a wheeled suitcase, said to hold an agreement for one of the rooms, and asked to be let in. Mr Keller refused. The police were called and did not attend. Later that evening the owner’s agent changed the locks again.
What the tribunal found — and then didn’t
The tribunal accepted a good deal. It found that the sole director, Mr Spitaleri, “was aware that Daniel was going to change the locks” (§18). It found that changing the locks in the face of Mr Keller’s objections “was an act likely to interfere with his peace and comfort”, and that the acts of the employee afterwards “were similarly likely to interfere with the Applicants’ peace and comfort” (§19).
That is the conduct element of section 1(3A) of the Protection from Eviction Act 1977 made out. The application failed on state of mind.
Because the respondent is a company, the tribunal applied Tesco Supermarkets v Nattrass [1972] AC 153: the intent has to be that of the directing mind, here the sole director. Fair enough. The difficulty is what the tribunal then asked about him.
The key problem: the wrong mental element
At §17 the tribunal directed itself that to find an offence under s.1(3A) it “would have to be satisfied that Mr Spitaleri knew that the acts of Daniel, or anyone else acting on the Respondent’s instructions, would cause the Applicants to leave the premises or to refrain from exercising any other right in relation to them” (emphasis added).
Set that against the subsection itself, which catches “the landlord of a residential occupier or an agent of the landlord” who does the acts and who “knows, or has reasonable cause to believe, that that conduct is likely to cause” the occupier to give up occupation or to refrain from exercising a right.
Two shifts, both against the tenant. Knowledge, with the alternative of reasonable cause to believe dropped out. And would cause, where Parliament wrote likely to cause. Section 1(3A) was inserted precisely to catch the landlord who cannot be shown to have intended the outcome — the self-direction reads that concession back out again.
Nor is it stated consistently. Across three sentences of §20 the test appears as “reasonable cause to believe”, then “cause to believe”, then “reason to believe”.
Then §20 applies it. The tribunal was not satisfied that the director “knew or had reason to believe that the locksmith was going to force entry into the flat and change the lock in the face of Mr Keller’s objections”. That is a finding about whether he foresaw the method his agent would use. Section 1(3A) does not ask that. It fixes the landlord with the agent’s acts and asks what the landlord knew or had reasonable cause to believe about the effect of the conduct. A landlord who sends a locksmith to an occupied flat is not answered by saying he did not picture the angle grinder.
Two further gaps follow from it. Section 1(3A) is expressly subject to s.1(3B), which gives a defence where the landlord proves reasonable grounds — the burden is his. Having found the acts done and their likely effect on peace and comfort, the tribunal never reached it, so nothing was decided about whether that burden was discharged.
And on s.1(3), the tribunal wrote: “The circumstances described above could give rise to such an inference, but we have to be satisfied to the criminal standard that this was the case.” The criminal standard plainly applies. But it does not bar inference. That was the point in Opara v Olasemo [2020] UKUT 96 (LC), where the Upper Tribunal held the FtT had been too cautious about drawing inferences from the evidence, and in Camfield & Ors v Uyiekpen & Anor [2022] UKUT 234 (LC). A tribunal that identifies an available inference and then declines it by reference to the standard of proof, without saying what other explanation the facts admit of, has not finished the job.
What was at stake
Had an offence been made out, the tribunal would have started at 100% — the alleged offences were “of a most serious nature” — and reduced to 50% for what it called the applicants’ lack of candour about their intentions. The agreed maximum was £35,067.08 (§22). So a little over £17,500, lost on a self-direction.
The practical point
Where the respondent is a rent-to-rent company, harassment and unlawful eviction claims run into the directing-mind problem in a way that licensing claims do not. Section 1(3A) exists to soften it. Applicants pleading a Protection from Eviction Act RRO against a corporate landlord should put the statutory words in front of the tribunal in terms — agent, reasonable cause to believe, likely to cause — and invite an express finding on each. And they should ask, in the same breath, for s.1(3B) to be dealt with, because that burden is the landlord’s, not theirs.
The decision is on GOV.UK: Apartment 4, 202 Regent’s Park Road, London, NW1 8AE: LON/00AG/HMB/2026/0001.
Pro bono advice given by Flat Justice.
