Page 135 - Solving Housing Disputes

welfare benefits cases from the scope of legal aid under the Legal Aid,
Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO 2012) has made
this harder and legal aid for such cases should be reinstated. However, in so
far as extraneous issues are relevant, we consider that they are already
accommodated within the existing system. In so far as other matters are not
relevant, we struggle to see (1) how widening the scope of the dispute helps
to defuse tension and preserve the parties’ relationship and (2) what
government will agree to fund a system which not only adjudicates upon live
issues but also, at its own instigation, seeks out new ones.

9. Similarly – and particularly importantly for litigants in person, but also more
generally – many district judges have become increasingly prepared to take a
broader approach to housing cases, e.g. directing information to be provided
by Housing Benefit departments in rent arrears cases. A further option, then,
for dealing with housing issues more comprehensively and holistically, would
be to formalise and extend judges’ powers in this regard under the Civil
Procedure Rules, as proposed below.

10. Fragmentation of housing law: it is also argued that the HDS is necessary
because different types of housing dispute are dealt with in different fora. We
consider that the difficulties arising from this can be overstated. There are
matters which can be defined as “housing law” but which are in reality very
distinct (see for example cases involving agricultural land versus
homelessness appeals, both of which the government has defined as matters
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of housing law). Dealing with these cases in different courts/tribunals does
not in reality present a problem.

11. We do nevertheless agree that there are areas of crossover within housing law
where divergent jurisdictions give rise to confusion and additional expense.
The answer to this is cross-ticketing of judges. We would also support
measures to make it easier for claims to be transferred between different
courts/tribunals, as well as amendments to the jurisdiction of the County
Court and Property Tribunal to allow matters which presently fall within the
jurisdiction of the latter to be raised as a defence or counterclaim in the former
and vice versa (provided that legal aid and inter partes costs were then made
available for those matters in the Tribunal). We do not consider this justifies
the creation of the HDS.

333 Considering the case for a housing court: call for evidence, MHCLG, November 2018, Annex B.
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