Harnoczi v Hitchings: council tax deletion appeal fails on lateness and absent expert evidence

Not all statutory time limits are created equal, and the difference between "shall" and "may" in a limitation clause can be the difference between a jurisdictional bar and a judicial discretion. Harnoczi v Hitchings [2026] EWHC 993 (Admin) offers a concise analysis of that distinction alongside a timely reminder of what it actually takes to remove a property from the council tax valuation list.

Richard Harnoczi was a joint tenant of 11 Daisy Street, Liverpool, a pre-1900 mid-terraced house banded at Band A, from June 2022. He proposed that the property be deleted from the valuation list on grounds of uninhabitability, citing damp, mould, a leaking roof, crumbling walls and inadequate heating. The Listing Officer refused, the Valuation Tribunal dismissed his appeal in September 2025, and Harnoczi then appealed to the High Court six weeks after the four-week deadline in regulation 43(2) of the Valuation Tribunal for England (Council Tax and Rating Appeals) (Procedure) Rules 2009.

The first question was whether the late filing was an absolute bar to jurisdiction. Jason Beer KC, sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge in Manchester, addressed it through a useful hierarchy of limitation clauses: nullity provisions at one extreme; clauses giving the court a power to extend in the middle; and at the weakest end, a formulation such as regulation 43(2), which provides only that a late appeal "may be dismissed." That formulation preserves jurisdiction but, as Beer KC confirmed, the Mitchell/Denton principles govern whether the court should exercise it, treating the delay as equivalent to an application for relief from sanctions under CPR 3.9.

Applying that framework, the appeal failed at the discretion stage. A six-week delay, more than double the permitted period, was treated as serious and significant. No adequate explanation had been offered: Harnoczi filed his notice incorrectly asserting it was in time, and even after the Respondent drew attention to the problem he took no remedial steps. With no good reason for the delay and no substantive merit in the appeal itself, dismissal followed.

On the merits, the Valuation Tribunal had correctly applied the test from Wilson v Coll [2011] EWHC 2824 (Admin): could the property, having regard to its character and a reasonable amount of repair, be occupied as a dwelling? The threshold is true dereliction, not mere disrepair. The property had been occupied throughout and a subsequent tenant moved in following minor repairs by the landlord. What was conspicuously absent was any independent professional survey demonstrating the property was genuinely incapable of repair. Without it, the appeal was always likely to fail, however vividly the disrepair was described.

A short coda to the judgement deals with a procedural misfire. Harnoczi sought to invoke CPR 3.3(5) to obtain a "review" of an earlier order refusing his adjournment. Beer KC found that CPR 3.3(5) applies only where the court has acted on its own initiative under CPR 3.3(4); it cannot be used to revisit an order made in response to an application by the very party now seeking the review. The correct route was an appeal, which was not pursued.

Three practical points emerge. A "may be dismissed" formulation is a weak time limit rather than an absolute bar, but Mitchell/Denton governs its exercise and a six-week delay with no credible explanation will rarely survive it. Removing a property from the council tax valuation list requires independent expert evidence of true dereliction; a detailed personal account of disrepair, however compelling, is unlikely to suffice alone. And CPR 3.3(5) is not a general mechanism for revisiting adverse orders made on an applicant's own request.

Harnoczi v Hitchings (Listing Officer) [2026] EWHC 993 (Admin), Jason Beer KC (sitting as Deputy High Court Judge), 22 June 2026