Residential Tenancies decisions can be appealed within 10 calendar days of the written decision. Be cautious: these days include weekends and holidays. This also means that if the decision is written on the 1st of the month and you get it on the 5th, you only have 5 days to appeal. It’s always safest to have decisions emailed to you so that you get them the day they’re written.

Residential Tenancies decisions can be appealed for any reason, but the reason must be clearly articulated on the Notice of Appeal form. These appeals are filed at your local Small Claims Court – or the Small Claims Court where the rental is located. You will need to explain why you are appealing the decision, give the court a copy of the Director’s Order, and fill out a Notice of Appeal form.

Depending on the amount of money you’re trying to claim, the cost of appealing varies. It’s typically between $33-200. If you are on Income Assistance, Disability, CPP, or otherwise low income you can apply to have this fee waived.

When you appeal a decision, you are given three copies each of the Notice of Appeal, Order of the Director, and a booklet with further instructions. You must serve these to the other party and the Director of Residential Tenancies. The Small Claims Clerk will tell you what date you need to serve Notice by, what date your pre-hearing will be (if there is one), and the phone numbers to call in to the pre-hearing.

You can serve the Director by serving someone in person at Access Nova Scotia. You can serve the other party by handing it to them in person, or having someone hand it to them on your behalf. The Small Claims Court will tell you other acceptable ways of serving the Director and the other party if needed.

Once both parties are served, you will take the Notice of Appeal form back to Small Claims Court and fill out an Affidavit of Service. This will be stamped by the clerk and submitted.

Small Claims appeals are a trial de novo. This means the adjudicator “should not consider any information received as the result of proceedings before the Director, and the Board cannot adopt or defer to the Director’s conclusions” (MacDonald v. Demont, 2001 NSCA 61).

In effect, this means you are retrying the case. You have to resubmit evidence and can include new evidence in the Small Claims hearing that you didn’t submit to Residential Tenancies.