Page 7 - Solving Housing Disputes
P. 7
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Too many people in England and Wales find it difficult to enforce access to housing
or other housing rights. Over the past decade, homelessness has more than doubled,
putting further strain on the sector. Local authorities are struggling to discharge
homelessness duties with limited housing stock. Early legal advice and intervention
to address housing problems, homelessness and associated or underlying issues has
been greatly attenuated by the cuts to civil legal aid. This has caused large parts of the
housing advice sector to collapse, resulting in “advice deserts”. Moreover, court
closures have further frustrated access to justice as respondents simply cannot afford
to attend possession hearings outside their own towns.
Once in the system, housing dispute resolution suffers from disaggregation: there are
too many places a person might go to resolve a dispute, with adversarial processes
that can be difficult to access, navigate and understand for lay people.
This Working Party builds upon the current endeavours of Government to improve
the way housing disputes are resolved by presenting proposals to create a more unified
and accessible housing dispute system. Key to these reforms are greater coherence,
access to legal advice and information, and conciliatory methods to resolve
disputes.
The report is set out in two parts, making the case:
• First, for a future model of dispute resolution, the Housing Disputes Service
(HDS), and
• Second, irrespective of whether the HDS is introduced, for essential reforms
to the current system.
The HDS would be an entirely new and distinct model for dispute resolution. It would
fuse elements of problem-solving, investigative, holistic and mediative models
utilised elsewhere in the justice system. It offers a new approach premised not just on
dealing with individual disputes, but rather on remedying underlying issues that
give rise to housing claims and sustaining tenant-landlord relationships beyond the
life of the dispute.
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