Page 100 - Solving Housing Disputes

common practices, cross-ticketing and training for this cadre will be hugely
important. When cross-ticketing, a judge potentially exercises powers across both
jurisdictions, thus there is a need for them to be prescriptive and clear about which
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power they are exercising at any given moment. Ease of access of case files
between formal jurisdictions will be important and we understand that the “Core
Case Data” system, a court and tribunal wide digital case management system, is
being rolled out across 2020, and this will assist. Our Working Party supports
the idea that a cadre of ticketed, specialised housing judges would be
established, that housing cases would be heard by judges with specific
housing and property expertise and that those judges receive specific
training on cross-ticketed disputes and the conduct of proceedings in
jurisdictions in which they do not normally sit. We recommend the
establishment of a cadre of ticketed “housing judges”, who would receive
specific training to hear housing disputes, irrespective of which jurisdiction
a dispute fall into.

Simplifying the landscape

4.7 While cross-ticketing ensures expert judges hear a dispute, it does not address the
fundamental problem of housing disputes being heard across separate
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jurisdictions. In 2008, the Law Commission published a report following four
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years of consultation on the resolution of housing disputes, which found

282 In Avon Grounds Rents Ltd v Child [2018] UKUT 204 the Upper Tribunal (UT) considered an appeal
from a first instance decision heard in the FTT (PC) by a judge exercising jurisdiction as both FTT PC
and District Judge. The appeal had been brought primarily on the basis that the judge had made decisions
outside the power of a Tribunal judge while purporting to exercise his FTT PC, as opposed to County
Court, powers. The UT noted that “the Tribunal has no power to extend its jurisdiction, or to arrogate to
itself a jurisdiction to determine questions which the County Court had no power to transfer to the
Tribunal for determination”. It ultimately held that the FTT PC had tried to determine the County Court
costs of the dispute by treating them as a variable administration charge, which the Tribunal had not been
entitled to do and that what ought to have been done was for costs to have been dealt with after the main
hearing using the “County Court hat” available to the judge.

283 The Leggat report on tribunal reforms suggested “there are confusing overlaps of jurisdiction between
courts and tribunals, as well as between tribunals” and that “an expert decision-making forum, without
overlapping jurisdictions, is a precondition of effective procedural reform”. Sir Andrew Leggatt, ‘Report
of the Review of Tribunals by Sir Andrew Leggatt: Tribunals for Users – One System, One Service’, (
August 2001) para 3.30 available at: https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20040722013223/http:
//www.dca.gov.uk/pubs/adminjust/adminjust.htm

284 Housing: Proportionate Dispute Resolution’, Law Commission Law Com No 309 (May 2008) avail
able online at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_
data/file/243400/7377.pdf
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