New Clause 15 - Notices to quit by tenants under assured tenancies: timing

Part of Renters (Reform) Bill – in the House of Commons am 4:15 pm ar 24 Ebrill 2024.

Danfonwch hysbysiad imi am ddadleuon fel hyn

Photo of Bob Neill Bob Neill Chair, Justice Committee, Chair, Justice Committee 4:15, 24 Ebrill 2024

I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as I am the owner of a single residential flat that is let out. I simply want to say that, in housing policy, we must always try to strike a balance between the legitimate interests and rights of tenants, and those of landlords, not all of whom are large corporations by any manner of means, and not of all whom make any great profit from those premises—they often operate at quite small margins—but who are a necessary part of the whole eco-structure. Equally, having served in local government for many years, I am conscious of the pressure that unwarranted evictions can place upon families and then upon local authorities, which have to pick up their housing duty towards those families. I believe that the Government are doing their level best in the Bill to get the right balance as far as that overall picture is concerned.

I want to speak in particular to Government new clause 30. We have already heard some rehearsal of the logic behind the new clause and the concerns about whether it will cause a delay to the abolition of section 21 evictions, as well as concern about the pressures on the county court. It is in that context, and wearing my hat as Chair of the Justice Committee, that I want to flag up to the House the inquiry that the Justice Committee is currently undertaking, and receiving evidence on, in relation to the work of the county court. I particularly welcomed the Minister’s commitment of £11 million to be transferred to the Ministry of Justice to carry out the assessment, because, of course, like local government and housing, the Ministry of Justice is an unprotected Department. It is also a downstream Department: either through the courts service or other parts of its work, it picks up many things that have gone wrong, whether elsewhere in our public services or in society as a whole. The courts system, including the civil courts and the county court in particular, is very much part of that: a great deal of social problems go through the county courts, and we know from all the evidence we are receiving that those county courts are under very great pressure.

As such, I support the new clause—but not because I want to delay the introduction of the reforms to the housing procedure that are envisaged, or the abolition of section 21 evictions as they currently exist, although as my hon. Friend Anthony Mangnall said, there may be other ways of striking the right balance that we could look at. I do not want to delay that reform, but we have to be frank and open about the pressure it will potentially put on what is already a strained county court system. If we are going to make those reforms—this applies to both parties—we need to will the means to make sure the county courts work as efficiently as they should do for all parties, whether landlords or tenants. That is the topic that I wanted to refer to some of the evidence on.

The overall picture, based on some 43 submissions that have been published on the Justice Committee’s website, is that of a very troubled situation as far as delays in the county court are concerned. There are delays in two areas that are germane to this debate: the first is the time it takes to see a possession action through the courts, and the second is enforcement, and particularly delays in getting bailiff appointments where necessary and then getting the enforcement carried out. There are real difficulties with both; it is fair to say that those difficulties vary across the country, but especially in many urban areas, there is considerable pressure. That is particularly acute in London and the south-east, where my constituency is.

Although the majority of those submissions came from landlords, they are based on data that I think is accepted and verified, whichever way one looks at this issue. The Large Agents Representation Group represents the largest letting and estate agents in London and the south-east. It has collected a deal of data, and it says in its submission that

“on average, the county court is taking approximately 276 working days to process a repossession claim from initial enquiry to a decision being given.”

Some of the other data that we get does not cover the whole of that process, which is why it is important to have the overall picture. That comes to an average of about 55 weeks, which does not include the enforcement time afterwards. That is unacceptable on both sides of the equation, so we need the resources to put that right.

Midland Heart, a housing association based in Birmingham—a well-established register of social landlords—says that

“typically, possession claims may take a minimum of 8 months, and sometimes up to 18 months, to conclude”.

The Hyde Group, another major social housing provider, said that

“the current level of delays is extreme and unacceptable”.

A number of those submissions also highlighted the serious delays in bailiffs executing warrants of possession when they are obtained under the current process. Of course, that is not unique to possession hearings: as has been observed, in some cases possession hearings proceed with more speed than other parts of the county court process, but they are still painfully slow in many areas. For example, we have had pretty clear evidence that there has been an increase in possession actions of roughly 16% from the equivalent quarter in 2019, before the pandemic. There was obviously a drop-off during the pandemic itself for a number of reasons, and as has been observed, the county court has done well to pick up the backlog that was created during the pandemic.

We ought to pay tribute to everybody in the county court: not just the judges, but the office staff who have worked phenomenally hard to try to turn that situation around. I hope all Members of this House will try to find the time to visit their local county court and see the work that is done by people on the admin side, who are often not the best-paid people in the public sector by any means. Indeed, recruitment and retention of staff in the county courts is itself a real challenge, which means that we must have continuing investment in those courts. I hope the assessment that the Lord Chancellor carries out under the terms of new clause 30 will help us to trigger greater investment and make the case for funding the county courts much better than it has been for many years under Governments, dare I say, of all political complexions.

To support that, I simply refer to some of the words of the former Lord Chief Justice, Lord Burnett of Maldon. He repeatedly told us, when he gave his annual evidence to the Justice Committee, that there are problems with recruiting full-time district judges, the condition of the estate and, very importantly, the fact that the county court relies almost entirely upon paper-based systems to carry out its work. The Crown court and the High Court have been substantially digitised. His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service has an ambitious digitisation programme, but it has run slowly—behind its original intentions—and many of the proposed portals on the civil side are not yet in operation. The net result is that we are working on an analogue system in the county court, which deals with about 95% of the civil claims, and overwhelmingly the vast bulk of possession actions. To make this Bill work, we are going to have to invest in the system that enables possession, where appropriate, to be addressed with the proper safeguards to tenants.

Delays have also been caused—this is something the Government have to take on board—through the withdrawal of legal aid in housing cases. When we talked to the Association of His Majesty’s District Judges and others who gave evidence to us, we repeatedly heard that with more and more people appearing in person—not just tenants in possession actions, but very often smaller landlords, who may also not be able to afford the cost of a solicitor—hearings with litigants in person take much longer. They have to have more explained to them, and the hearing takes longer. The judge has to draft the orders, which would normally be drafted by the lawyers. Therefore, the productivity, particularly of the district judges, is reduced: they can deal with fewer cases in a sitting day. That is another reason why we need such a level of investment. To quote the evidence to us from the Association of His Majesty’s District Judges,

“the County Court has long been the poor relation of the justice system when it comes to technology.”

The other problem is with the recruitment of salaried full-time district judges, who are the vast bulk of the people who carry out this work. It is an MOJ issue, and as much as anything, this requires making the working conditions of those judges attractive and making sure that salaries are competitive, not that that problem does not exist at the high levels of the judiciary. Unless we have that, unless we have proper representation in these actions so that time is saved by lawyers honing the issues and enabling judges to deal with cases more quickly, and unless we have sufficient district judges recruited to hear the cases, we will not achieve the much swifter resolution of these issues that the Bill seeks to achieve.

There is also the issue of enforcement. The 2015 interim review of the structure of civil courts led by Lord Justice Briggs, as he then was, described enforcement as “the Achilles heel” of the civil justice system,

“or at least of the County Court.”

It is fair to say that, since 2016, the Government have made serious investment in His Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service’s reform programme. Progress has been made, but it is fair to say that the ambition the Lord Chancellor set out in 2016 of transforming our justice system has not yet been achieved in the county court. I hope that we can use this debate as a signal that, if we are going to achieve the policy objectives, which I think the House is broadly agreed on, we have to will the means to the court system, because we cannot have efficient execution of policy without giving the means to the court system that carries it out. Legal rights, be they the rights of the tenant or of the landlord, are only as good as their ability to access the courts to uphold those rights in a timely fashion. Sadly, we not yet able to achieve that.

Finally, there many great people doing work in housing law, be it in the courts or behind the scenes. One of the great contributors to housing law in this country recently retired from the bench. His Honour Jan Luba KC may be known to some Members as one of the titans of housing law, both as a lawyer and as a judge. Jan recently retired as the designated civil judge for London. He had oversight over all London’s county courts. He has probably done more for housing law than anyone else I have come across. I hope that in retirement he will speak frankly about the pressures that his colleagues who are still working are under. That is my plea. If we want to make this Bill work, we have to use the assessment under new clause 30 as evidence of the need for sustained investment in our civil justice system.