Page 22 - Solving Housing Disputes

individual issues and advising parties on respective rights and obligations to
the highest level.

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2.15 The service will need to cater for a wide range of issues. It will need to take
advantage of best practice in its processes, including digital case files for
officers and an accessible digital page designed for lay users, full of
information on substantive rights and applicable regulatory standards. It will
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also need to be accessible for those who experience digital exclusion, so
multiple methods of engaging with the service would be necessary. Looking
beyond the obvious parties, local authorities have numerous regulatory
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functions over housing and a direct interest in proceedings which might
result in an eviction where they have homelessness functions. Reference to
the proposed service allows all issues and all parties - including local
authorities and other enforcement bodies - to come together to forge
constructive solutions and ensure that valuable housing resources are put to
their best use without introducing unnecessary adverse consequences.

2.16 The intention is to establish a new culture, collaborative, open and ethical,
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designed to allow all parties to the relationship to fulfil their continuing roles
otherwise than at each other’s cost. The HDS would be an accessible form of
dispute resolution designed to change culture not merely in dispute resolution,

42 From the simple to the complex, from the purely legal to the exclusively factual, from high value
disputes to the smallest amounts conceivable in contention, from what are civil claims to what may be
criminal prosecutions.

43 Digital exclusion describes “those who lack access either to the internet or to a device, or the skills,
ability, confidence or motivation to use it – as well as those who rely on digital assistance”, JUSTICE
(2018), Preventing Digital Exclusion from Online Justice para 1.8 available at https://justice.org.uk/wp-
content/uploads/2018/06/Preventing-Digital-Exclusion-from-Online-Justice.pdf

44 Some of them, such as licensing issues, referable to the FTT (PC) and then to the Upper Tribunal;
others, such as environmental health matters or harassment and illegal eviction, to the magistrates’ court
and then to the Crown Court.

45 Here as elsewhere, parties includes external parties such as local authorities and relationships between
them and others, including landlords; it could in some cases include the fire authority or, e.g., the police
in cases of serious anti-social behaviour or social services where children, the elderly or the otherwise
vulnerable are involved. Where there is a prima facie case for the exercise of powers by any such body,
HDS would inform that body that it is to be a participant in the process; with one exception, it would be
subject to determinations by HDS as to the use of its powers (as appealable as any other determination
by HDS). The exception is where the police are prosecuting using conventional (not housing, i.e. Anti-
social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014) criminal powers, e.g. fraud, assault, theft, etc.

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