The exercise of judicial discretion in rent arrears cases - Sheffield ...

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For each case in the observed sessions, the researcher sought to record the important facts in the case, including (where available): Weekly rent Any outcome requested by claimant Representation of defendant – in person, legally, in writing Level of arrears Any housing benefit issues Any previous hearings Family make-up of defendant Work history of defendant Outcome of case at hearing In order to confirm any facts established at the hearing, the researchers also checked the details against those in the court file. We also sought to record the nature of the judges’ interactions with both parties, although it must be acknowledged that the presence of a researcher in court may have affected the way that judges dealt with claimants and defendants. Given the qualitative focus of the research we have used this quantitative database merely to describe outcomes and difference, without seeking to provide a statistical analysis which might ascribe statistical significance to different facts about defendants. We have focused the majority of our quantitative analysis on the 540 hearings which were the first time that case came to court, in order to compare outcomes of the same type of hearing. 289 of these first hearings (54%), involved tenants of local authorities and 245 (46%) housing association tenants. Of these 303 (56%) were secure tenants and 237 (44%) were assured tenants. The largest number of hearings observed was in London, which had the most frequent and longest housing possession lists during the study period. Table 13 sets out the distribution of cases between the courts: Table 13: Distribution of first hearing cases between courts (n=540) Court Number of Cases % of total London 363 67% West Country 47 9% Northern 1 61 11% Northern 2 69 13% 115
In analysing cases percentages have been rounded and may not always add up to 100%. Where, in Chapter 4, decisions are identified by individual judge in London county court each judge has been assigned a number to anonymise decisions. 3. Interviews with district judges The final element of the research was interviews with district judges operating in the three geographical areas. To obtain a large enough sample of judges we could not simply confine ourselves to those sitting in the courts where cases had been observed. Accordingly we also approached judges sitting in neighbouring courts. Some judges sat in more than one court, including the observation court and others. Judges in the three geographical areas were approached through the District Judges Association, and asked to take part in the research. Judges were free to refuse, and a small number declined to take part. One limitation to the sample of judges was that it included only one deputy district judge among the 26 judges interviewed. Table 14: Location of judges interviewed Court Number of Judges London 4 Neighbouring courts 5 West Country 3 Neighbouring courts 3 Northern 1 4 Northern 2 2 Neighbouring courts 5 Interviews lasted between one and two hours and were recorded and transcribed. Judges have not been identified by name or court, and have each been ascribed a letter to identify them. All the district judges who were interviewed had considerable experience of hearing housing possession cases, generally over many years. They came from a variety of backgrounds – the majority having been solicitors in private practice but with a wide variety of different types of practice – details are set out in Chapter 4. These interviews were structured into two broad parts. The first part drew on a semistructured questionnaire around a number of key topics about the judge’s background experience; their approach to decision-making in possession cases; their views about procedure and external factors (including housing benefit); the impact of landlords and their 116
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The exercise of judicial discretion
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The Research Unit, Department for C
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Contents Executive summary i Chapte
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Executive summary The research ques
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the shift to housing officers appea
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Conclusions A wide and diverse rang
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on the role of judges under the exi
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Northern 1 court hears over 1500 ho
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significance to a particular respon
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The application may be adjourned; t
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such forms are completed in less th
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In November 2001, the Legal Service
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Levels of arrears Although the reas
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Table 2: Rent levels from ODPM stat
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Table 5: Changes in outcomes of ini
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Table 6: Impact of participation on
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The focus group participants consid
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consideration in this chapter, the
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Neither of the judges seemed to con
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chambers, where the possession list
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Most of the district judges felt th
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The views of the claimants’ group
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Qualitative and quantitative data f
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anything to say, and wants to stay
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Table 7: Sources of training and up
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sought with what they know the judg
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Chapter 5: Judges and landlords Int
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Chart 7: Orders granted by requests
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some unevenness in the impact of re
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Thus it can be seen that the type o
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District judges differed on how muc
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There were three other, more genera
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Conclusions In this chapter, we hav
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Chapter 6: Judges and tenants Intro
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approach he was more confident in t
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“I think in terms of exercising d
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Family make up The broad powers of
Page 77 and 78: are trying to deal with the particu
Page 79 and 80: “I wouldn’t dream of making an
Page 81 and 82: interpreter. Similarly, many of the
Page 83 and 84: Judges are human too - personal rea
Page 85 and 86: understand the proceedings, a great
Page 87 and 88: What must be emphasised is that whi
Page 89 and 90: also the most common explanation gi
Page 91 and 92: anomalous case of West Country cour
Page 93 and 94: District judges’ knowledge. Some
Page 95 and 96: Two of the judges interviewed felt
Page 97 and 98: DJ: I’d be inclining towards the
Page 99 and 100: how he dealt with the housing benef
Page 101 and 102: Chapter 8: Particular decisions: gr
Page 103 and 104: Table 10: Outcomes in Ground 8 case
Page 105 and 106: Others were, however, prepared to g
Page 107 and 108: It is perhaps not surprising that,
Page 109 and 110: the basis of the original possessio
Page 111 and 112: Chart 13: Impact of family make up
Page 113 and 114: The advice to the tenant was often
Page 115 and 116: Chapter 9: Conclusions Where the la
Page 117 and 118: shows that the vast majority of tho
Page 119 and 120: important determining factors is th
Page 121 and 122: Thus it is likely that that even th
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Page 125 and 126: Lawrence J (1995) “Sentencing pro
Page 127: give a typology of the characterist
Page 131 and 132: Appendix 2 - Research instruments 1
Page 133 and 134: What factors would you ascribe thos
Page 135 and 136: 20. Typically, how would you descri
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Page 139: DCA Research Series No. 6/05 The ex
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