Safe and Efficient Care Limited v Care Quality Commission

1. Mr John Arrey Eta, registered manager and company director of Safe and Efficient Care Limited (the Applicant), lodged an application to appeal with the First-tier Tribunal. The application is dated 8 October 2025. The date of receipt of the appeal application is a matter in issue in the appeal .

2. The appeal concerned a decision of the Care Quality Commission (CQC, the Respondent) to cancel its registration as a service provider in respect of the regulated activities of personal care at Worcestershire, 5 Edward Hall House, School Lane, Upton-upon-Severn, Worcester, WR8 0LQ. The decision was made pursuant to section 17(1) (e) of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and Regulation 6(1)(c) of the Care Quality Commission (Registration) Regulations 2009 because the service provider had not been carrying on the regulated activity ‘personal care’ for a continuous period of 12 months or more.

3. The Notice of Decision (dated 8 September 2025) was email to Mr Eta on 8 September 2025, so it was received on that date. The statutory 28-day time period for bringing the appeal to the First-tier Tribunal started to run on 8 September 2025 and the last date for bringing the appeal in time was 6 October 2025. The Applicant asserts that he sent the appeal application to the First-tier Tribunal on 8 or 9 October 2025. The Tribunal administration’s first record of receipt of the appeal application, dated 8 October 2025, is 21 January 2026.

4. Pursuant to section 32(2) of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 ( the Act ), no appeal against a decision or order may be brought by a person more than 28 days after service on the person of notice of the decision or order.

5. Until the Supreme Court decision in Pomiechowski & Others v District Court of Legunica Poland [2012] UKSC 20 , statutory time limits were interpreted as being absolute, with no discretion afforded to the relevant judicial body to exercise a discretion to extend the statutory time limit. Ultimately, the case established that absolute statutory time limits should be read in a way which is consistent with Article 6 of the ECHR: i.e. that the relevant judicial body must have discretion to extend statutory time limits where the very essence of the right to appeal is impaired.

6. By way of an order dated 23 January 2026, Tribunal Judge Khan listed the application for a preliminary hearing on 19 February 2026 to consider the preliminary issue of extending the statutory time limit and registering the appeal. The hearing

7. Mr Eta attended the preliminary hearing, representing the Applicant and, in effect, representing himself. Mr John Okunpolor Junior, lawyer, attended, representing the Respondent. Mr Eta provided oral evidence to the Tribunal.

8. There were some observers at the public hearing, from the CQC. There were some technological issues at the beginning of the hearing which caused some delay but did resolve.

9. In advance of the hearing, the Tribunal had read a 232-page digital hearing bundle.

10. On 18 February 2026, the Respondent sent the Tribunal an application to admit late evidence, consisting of an email sent by a member of the Respondent’s legal team to the CQC Tribunal administration on 24 December 2025 enquiring as to whether the Appellant had sent the Tribunal administration an appeal application and a response dated 29 December 2025 from a member of the Care Standards Tribunal administration staff, in which it was confirmed that no appeal application had been received. There was no objection from Mr Eta. The Tribunal considered the document of relevance and duly admitted it.

11. Mr Eta sent the Tribunal three emails on 18 February 2026 by way of late evidence applications. The first, at 18:48, which contained a blank document which Mr Eta later confirmed was attached to the second email he sent at 22:53, which contained a screen shot of an email he sent to an email address entitled ‘cts’ and an immediate response from ‘mail delivery subsystem’. The third email to the Care Standards Tribunal, sent on 18 February 2026 at 23:08, consisted of an email Mr Eta forwarded to ‘enforcement comms’ at the CQC at 00:20 on 9 October 2025. Mr Okunpolor did not object to the admission of the documents. The Tribunal duly admitted them – they were of relevance and acted to assist the Tribunal in establishing what happened.

12. At the beginning of the hearing, the Tribunal took time to hear further information from the Appellant about what the admitted documents seemed to demonstrate and to explain the issues in the preliminary application. The Tribunal gave Mr Eta some more time to interrogate the ‘sent items’ of the relevant email address to try to establish if he had in fact sent an appeal application so that it was received by the Care Standards Tribunal on 8 or 9 October 2025. He was not able to find any further emails to assist on this point. The Law

13. The Tribunal has an inherent discretion (or duty) to extend statutory time limits which can only be reasonably exercised in circumstances where the very essence of the right to appeal was impaired, or, in other words, the Applicant doing all they personally can to bring the appeal and notify timeously. Once the discretion (or duty) arises, it must be exercised to the minimum extent necessary to secure compliance with the European Convention on Human Rights.

14. In R (on the application of) Adesina & Others v Nursing and Midwifery Council [2013] EWCA Civ 818 , in the context of the statutory framework which regulates nurses and midwives’ registration, the Court of Appeal considered that the scope of the discretion to extend time is extremely narrow. It is worth taking a moment to examine the circumstances of Adesina (Ms Adesina) and the other appellant in the joined appeal, Ms Baines. For both Ms Adesina and Ms Baines, they missed the statutory deadlines in their appeals by only a matter of days and on the contributing basis that it took some time to seek legal advice. In both cases, the delay was not considered exceptional, and the time limits were not extended by the Court of Appeal in either case.

15. The Court of Appeal considered the issue more recently and in the context of a statutory right of appeal against a decision of the Health and Care Professions Council (in which there is a 28-day time limit for bringing the appeal). In Lars Stuewe v Health and Care Professions Council [2021] EWHC 3362 (Admin) , the scope of the discretion has been determined as – that the circumstances are exceptional, taking into account all relevant factors, one of which may be the actions of the Appellant. As was made clear in this case, each case will turn on its own facts and the assistance to be drawn from the outcomes on the facts of other cases may be limited.

16. It will often be relevant – a relevant factor - to consider whether the Appellant has done everything they can to lodge the appeal within the time limit.

17. The correct approach in each case is for the Tribunal to ask whether or not “exceptional circumstances” exist such that denying a power to extend time would impair the very essence of the right of appeal. It may be relevant to consider, in answering the question, whether an Appellant has personally done all that they can reasonably be expected to do to bring the appeal in time.

18. Rule 5(3)(a) of the Tribunal Procedure Rules 2008 gives the Tribunal the power to extend time for complying with any rule, practice direction or direction, unless such extension would conflict with a provision of another enactment containing a time limit. The Tribunal’s conclusions with reasons

19. The first issue for the Tribunal is the date on which the appeal application was received by the Tribunal. Mr Eta submitted that it was received by the Tribunal on 9 October 2025. The CQC disputed this and submitted it was received by the Tribunal on 21 January 2026. The date on which the appeal application was received has to be established, through evidence, before moving on to consider the duty to consider extending time for bringing the appeal. Rule 20(1)(a) of the Tribunal Procedure Rules 2008 sets out that any appeal application should be sent or delivered so it is received by the Tribunal no later than the statutory time limit set out at section 32(2) of the Act .

20. From the Tribunal's review of the documents and Mr Eta’s understanding, in oral evidence, the following was established as more likely than not to have been the sequence of events. Mr Eta received the notice of decision from the CQC on 8 September 2025. He was not well at the point when he received it, but after a period of time, he reviewed the notice of decision and prepared an appeal application, with supporting documents. On 8 October 2025, at 18:54, he sent an email with the appeal application attached to an email address entitled ‘[email protected]’ . At 18:54, Mr Eta received an email response or what is typically referred to as a ‘bounceback’ email from ‘mail delivery subsystem’. On Mr Eta’s own account, in oral evidence, he accepted that he had sent the appeal application to the wrong email address, having read it wrongly from the penultimate page of the CQC’s notice of decision. Mr Eta explained that he then had to tend to other matters and when he received the ‘bounceback’ email, he forwarded that email chain to the correct email address of ‘[email protected]’, but he did that at 00:20 on 9 October 2025. Mr Eta conceded in evidence that he had not been able to find the sent email to the correct Tribunal administration email address which also contained the appeal application. From the documents provided, Mr Eta did receive an automated response from the Care Standards Tribunal administration on 9 October 2025 which indicated ‘if you have submitted an appeal against a decision, it is in your interests to notify the Regulator/Decision Maker immediately that you have done so that they are aware that you have submitted an appeal. This may affect any further action they take such as enforcement until the appeal is concluded’.

21. On 9 October 2025 at 00:20, Mr Eta sent an email to ‘[email protected]’ to inform the CQC that he had submitted an appeal to the Tribunal.

22. It is quite clear to the Tribunal that Mr Eta thought he had sent the Tribunal his appeal application, so it was received on 9 October 2025. However, the Tribunal finds that the appeal application was not received on 9 October 2025 due to oversight on Mr Eta’s part.

23. The Tribunal had before it documentation which demonstrated that Mr Eta sent an email to ‘[email protected]’ on 16 January 2026 to query his registration status as he had been informed that as he had not appealed, the registration had been cancelled.

24. On 20 January 2026, the Dormancy Monitoring Team at the CQC responded to Mr Eta’s email in which he shared a screen shot from 9 October 2025. In the Dormancy Monitoring Team’s response, it confirmed that the appeal was sent to the Tribunal out of time and so permission from the Tribunal would be required to pursue the appeal.

25. On 21 January 2026, the Tribunal administration received Mr Eta’s appeal application, which resulted in a case management order dated 23 January 2026 from Judge Khan.

26. Mr Eta conceded that he had mistakenly thought he had sent the Tribunal his appeal application on 9 October 2025, following receipt of the ‘bounceback’ email which alerted him to the fact that he had sent the appeal application and supporting documents, on 8 October 2025, to the wrong email address. Mr Eta further conceded that he could not be sure that in forwarding the email chain, which included the ‘bounceback’ email, that the email chain contained the appeal application and he did not check this at the time.

27. In Mr Eta’s mind, at that time, he thought he had sent the appeal application to the Tribunal on 9 October 2025. He accepted that if that had been the case, the appeal still would have been late by some three days, but he explained this was because he mistakenly thought that the 28-day time period referred to the standard working days of Monday to Friday.

28. On the evidence available to the Tribunal, it drew the reasonable inference that the appeal application was not received by the Tribunal administration until 21 January 2026. The Tribunal placed weight on the email from the Tribunal administration of 29 December 2025 in which it confirmed it had not received an appeal application. We took into account Mr Eta’s concession that he was unable to show, through documentary evidence, that he had actually sent the appeal application to the Tribunal on 8 or 9 October 2025. Finally, the Tribunal considered the process undertaken by the Tribunal administration when it received the appeal application – within two days a case management order was issued. If it had received an appeal application on 8 or 9 October 2025, it is reasonable to conclude it would have adopted that process and arranged for a case management order to be issued within a few working days of receipt.

29. The Tribunal found that Mr Eta’s appeal application was received by the Tribunal administration on 21 January 2026.

30. The Tribunal considered carefully the submissions from both parties on the approach to take to the out of time appeal. Mr Eta asked the Tribunal to conclude that he had sent the appeal application on 9 October 2025 as he had thought he had done so properly on that date. He proceeded on the mistaken basis that he had sent the appeal application on 9 October 2025. The Tribunal finds this explanation reasonable from Mr Eta and has no reason to doubt that he genuinely thought he had submitted his appeal application in full. This much could be inferred from Mr Eta’s explanation, in conjunction with the timeline, which supports his position. It was only when Mr Eta was informed that the cancellation of registration had taken effect, on 16 January 2026, that he queried the position. However, in the Tribunal’s view, given that Mr Eta had already sent the appeal application to an incorrect email address on 8 October 2025, it should have been incumbent on him to check that his appeal application was actually attached and duly sent to the correct email address. He did not carry out this check, by reviewing the ‘sent items’ email folder, for example.

31. The Tribunal considered the line of principles from case law, starting with Pomiechowski & Others v District Court of Legunica Poland [2012] UKSC 20 , helpfully provided by the Respondent in the hearing bundle. The Tribunal asked itself, having established that the appeal application was received on 21 January 2026, concerning a decision notified on 8 September 2025, are there exceptional circumstances in play such that denying a power to extend time would impair the very essence of the right of appeal?

32. In considering the circumstances, the Tribunal took into account what Mr Eta did to ensure the appeal application was received in time. Did he do all he reasonably could to ensure it was lodged in time? In the Tribunal's judgment, he did not. In a context where he sent the appeal application to the wrong email address on his first attempt, which he then simply forwarded to the correct email address, it would have been reasonable for him to check on exactly what he had sent to the Tribunal administration. This became more pressing as time moved on and he received no further communication from the Tribunal (until actually sending the appeal application on 21 January 2026).

33. Mr Eta’s error was to send an email to the Tribunal, already out of time, without checking if the email he sent, which was a forwarded email, actually contained the appeal application as an attachment. In the Tribunals’ view, given what had happened with the incorrect email address issue, it would have been reasonable, in the circumstances, for Mr Eta to check that the documents had been sent properly to the correct email address.

34. In the Tribunal’s view, Mr Eta had a meaningful opportunity to send the appeal application within time. Further, the auto response email he received from the Care Standards Tribunal (on 9 October 2025) could not have been reasonably interpreted as meaning the appeal application had been received and would proceed. The Tribunal also noted that when Mr Eta sent the Respondent an email on 9 October 2025 to inform it that he had sent an appeal application to the Care Standards Tribunal, he did not attach the appeal application and supporting documents. Again, in the Tribunal's view, it would have been reasonable, at that stage, to ensure the appeal application and supporting documents were attached to the email.

35. The Tribunal considered the nature of the appeal, as part of its proportionality assessment, not least as this is an unfortunate set of circumstances for Mr Eta and the service provider. The Tribunal noted that when Mr Eta is ready to do so, he can make a new application for registration of the service provider to the Respondent.

36. The Tribunal concludes that Mr Eta did not do all that was reasonable once he had sent the appeal application to the wrong email address on 8 October 2025 and made a decision to forward the email chain to the correct email address on 9 October 2025. There were further checks he should have undertaken, taking into account the problem he had encountered the evening before. For that key reason, the Tribunal does not consider it proportionate, in the circumstances, to extend time for sending the appeal application so that it is received from 7 October 2025 to 21 January 2026. Order It is ordered that:

1. The application to extend time for bringing the appeal is refused.

2. This is the final order in the proceedings. Judge S Brownlee First-tier Tribunal (Health, Education and Social Care) Date Issued: 23 February 2026 WARNING Both parties are reminded that failure to comply with any of these directions may result in the Tribunal using its powers in Rule 8(4)(a) to strike out all or part of the party’s case or restricting the party’s participation in the proceedings.