Here is a question to the blog clinic from Nick who is a landlord
I am a landlord follower of the blog and had a recent experience with an awful tenant, I wanted to check whether I could make a claim against the court for a recent botched eviction.
I served notice on a tenant several months ago, there was a variety of reasons why I wanted her out including rent arrears, antisocial behaviour, failure to allow a gas inspection and preventing access for emergency contractors.
It became clear that she wasn’t living at the property and was possibly subletting. Two notices for the above were issued and then retracting when she suddenly allowed access and paid her rent.
By this point I had had enough and decided to serve a Section 21.
The tenant made every attempt to sabotage the eviction, firstly by claiming she had not received the notice or been given a tenancy agreement and her deposit had not been registered. I was able to prove this was untrue and was given an order for possession.
The eviction was then delayed because the tenant claimed she was being harassed and produced a threatening hand written note which she alleged was written by ‘people working for the landlord’. She also said she had to go abroad due to a family bereavement and could not attend the hearing.
The court granted her special dispensation and she was given another hearing during which she made the same claims which were dismissed.
Eventually I was given an eviction date so I arranged a locksmith, took the day off work and travelled down. 20 minutes before the eviction I had a call from my solicitor saying that the tenant had registered another appeal, this time claiming she had suffered a miscarriage. After waiting around for 6 hours the eviction was cancelled.
The eviction finally went ahead 8 weeks after the original date by which time I had incurred further solicitor’s fees and paid a locksmith twice.
My question is this: if the eviction date had been fixed why was the tenant allowed a last-minute reprieve for a spurious claim? No one seems to have verified its legitimacy and a panicked decision was made which has cost me a lot of money and prevented me getting my property back on the market.
Also why was the tenant given special dispensation just because she went abroad, especially when she was given plenty of warning about the court hearing?
I feel the court is partly to blame for this fiasco, am I right?
You can write to the court and complain about the problems you have experienced but so far as I am aware you cannot claim compensation.
This is unfortunately the sort of thing that happens sometimes when you have a difficult tenant. I had a similar case (when I did eviction work) of a tenant who made application after application to the court.
Needless to say the tenant attended none of the hearings and my lady incurred the expense (and the bother) of having to attend and arrange (and pay for) representation.
Eventually the Judge made an order that the defendant should not be allowed to make any further applications without leave – I think this was after this had happened about three times.
After that she was given pretty short shrift by the court on her (inevitable) subsequent applications, as it was clear that she was trying to play the system.
However the court will not do this unless the defendant is clearly not acting in good faith. This takes a while.
The problem is that there ARE situations where it is entirely justifiable for a tenant to make applications and the court does not want to prejudice those applications by assuming that every time a defendant makes this sort of claim, that it is a ‘try on’.
There is also the problem that the courts are overworked, as are the Judges, and there is no time for the Judge to do an indepth analysis in the short time allowed to deal with things. So to start with they often give defendants the benefit of the doubt.
However so far as evictions are concerned, the government are aware that there is a problem with the time it takes for landlords to recover property, particularly in situations where tenants are not paying rent.
I am therefore glad that you have given details of your case as it will serve as a real life example of the serious delays that landlords can experience under the current system.
So mandatory possession isn’t mandatory possession then?
How can a tenant get a postponement or delay of any kind on a s21.
Makes a strong case for going Accelerated
Well a Judge can give a tenant up to six weeks after the date of the date the order was made, even under a mandatory ground, in cases of ‘exceptional hardship’. I suspect the tenants application fell within this 6 week period.
The point about a mandatory ground is that Judges are not supposed to give any MORE than that, whereas for discretionary grounds they have a much greater discretion.
When faced with a tenant who plays the system in this way I would like to share with you something I did in this situation in case it may help.
My tenant claimed he would be abroad on the court hearing date, and the date was postponed. I therefore telephoned him on his landline telephone number at the house at the exact time he should have been in court. He answered the phone and I had a witness hear him say hello and state his name. I asked my witness to sign an affidavit confirming what we had just done and faxed it to the court, and to my solicitor immediately. My solicitor later commented that the judge was NOT impressed that my tenant had lied and I am sure it went some way to speed up the whole process after that point! In my opinion, a judge does like to be messed around with and appreciates respectful communication. In this day and age of mobile phones it may not be as effective now but I wanted to share that in case it gave you an idea of what you might do.