To Spam or Not to Spam- Statutory Notices and Service by Email

A recent decision regarding taxi licensing has caught my eye, courtesy of a report by the excellent barristers at Francis Taylor Building who acted on the case. Given that I mostly write about property and housing matters you might wonder why I have suddenly developed an interest in taxi licensing. Sadly, I haven’t! But this decision has important implications across a range of local authority enforcement matters.

In this case Maidstone Council sought to revoke a taxi driver’s licence. They emailed him a notice to that effect rather than posting it. The notice went into the spam folder for the taxi driver’s email and so he did not get it for some time. As a result he missed the strict 21 day time limit for appealing such a revocation to the Magistrates. It was argued before the Magistrates and then before the High Court that the time limit had not stared to run until the email was actually seen by the taxi driver because it had not been properly served.