Jul

Evictions; The faster and more cost-effective solution

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There are thousands of County Court Possession Orders forming the backlog of cases awaiting an eviction date from the County Court Bailiff Service as a direct result of the pandemic.

Therefore, if you have a Possession Order in the system and are waiting for an eviction date from the County Court, you could be in for a long wait.

It could take months and possibly longer for the courts to clear the backlog alongside dealing with the new cases that are being added daily.

There is an alternative which is not only a quicker route to getting your property back but could also save you hundreds if not thousands of pounds in unpaid rent.

Transfer approved

The eviction can be expedited to the High Court with a simple application to the County Court seeking permission; a District Judge will review the matter and usually approve the transfer.

The up-front cost of High Court Enforcement is greater than those of a County Court Bailiff.

But, given you could be waiting a significant time for the County Court to allocate an eviction date, if you are not being paid rent, then the months of time this will save you makes it the most cost-effective option for you overall enabling you to re-let the property sooner rather than later.

If you have obtained an Order for Possession and in the position outlined above, then we can help.

The process from this point is to make an application to the County Court for permission to use High Court Enforcement. We will assist you with this.

Once the application has been granted, you can then issue a Writ of Possession in the High Court and we will assist you during the process.

Further instructions

Once this has been received, we can execute it in accordance with your further instructions, but only after we have served the mandatory 14-day Notice of Eviction on the tenants or any other occupiers of the property.

To execute the Writ, we will attend at the given time with a locksmith and take back possession of your property for you immediately.

At the point of the eviction, we also serve a ‘torts notice’ too. This is a legal document alerting the owner of items that have been abandoned on private land or property.

The notice period given on ours torts is typically seven days as it needs to be deemed as reasonable, for a larger scale operation you may consider allowing more time.

Items removed

If the tenant fails to act within the terms of the notice, you can then remove any items left behind yourself; you would not be permitted to do so if you had not served such a notice.

Torts are a good way to put pressure on tenants who try to cause further issues and delays; whether you follow through on it or not is up to you.

The test on a torts notice is that you have been ‘reasonable’ so we would not advocate providing less than seven days to protect your own position.

In addition to the eviction, as Enforcement Agents, we are in the unique position of being able to also pursue the tenant for the unpaid rent and costs as awarded as a money judgment on your Court Order (providing they exceed £600).

Pursue recovery

This can be done either at the time of the eviction or you may prefer to pursue recovery of the money later if it is likely that the former tenant’s financial position is going to improve.

Please do not be put off by the horrendously long lead times in the County Courts at the moment as there is an alternative solution which is quicker, more cost effective and from the point of such matters being transferred to us, we have a 100% success rate.

Please get in touch if you think we can help or if you would like more information or guidance.

Call: 01992 666396

Email: commercialservices@courtenforcementservices.co.uk

www.courtenforcementservices.co.uk

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