Page 17 - Solving Housing Disputes

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incomprehensible. Moreover, there is an inbuilt imbalance in the majority of
cases, since resolving a dispute for a landlord or service provider is a business
matter or a professional function while for a tenant it is about their home, an
emotional proposition by which they are constantly surrounded, or in the case
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of homelessness, the absence of a home.

2.6 In housing disputes, courts are called upon to provide a legal resolution to
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relationships that have broken down for any number of reasons. However,
that resolution commonly does not resolve all the actual or potential issues
between the parties, still less between parties and others who may nonetheless
have a role, such as local authorities both as enforcement bodies and in
relation to homelessness. In a context of diminished public funding for legal
advice and financial pressures from Universal Credit on tenants, judges
intervene as far as they are able; they manage possession lists by encouraging
parties to pursue negotiated solutions, such as rent repayment agreements or
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suspended possession orders subject to certain obligations on a tenant. We
acknowledge these efforts and those of the overstretched advice sector and
elsewhere in the report make recommendations for how the current system
can consolidate developments that focus on problem solving in and out of the
courts and tribunals.

2.7 However, the system as currently configured fails in several ways.
Responsibility and oversight reside in too many places, preventing a coherent
understanding of structural problems within housing. Disputes are submitted

26 JUSTICE’s 2019 Working Party report, Understanding Courts, made 41 recommendations to improve
understanding of and participation in the court process for lay users, to address a culture that leads to
“user dissatisfaction, confusion and exclusion”, executive summary, available at
https://justice.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Understanding-Courts.pdf

27 The loss of one’s home is a traumatic experience, with long lasting effects on wellbeing and family
life, “from disrupting a child’s education to triggering stress and depression”, with the corresponding
public perception that repossession and homelessness are two of the three most serious problems a person
could face, Eviction Risk Monitor, ‘local rates of landlord and mortgage possession claims’, in: Shelter
policy library December 2011, p. 3.

28 As described elsewhere in this report, most housing disputes in any given year are possession claims,
involving relationships between a landlord, whether private or social, and a tenant.

29 Such an approach is positively encouraged by the Pre-Action Protocol for Possession Claims by Social
Landlords and the Pre-Action Protocol for Possession Claims based on Mortgage or Home Purchase Plan
Arrears in Respect of Residential Property - see para 3.30, below.
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