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

The focus group participants considered that particular courts each had their own
established culture. This more clearly emerged in smaller court where fewer judges sat. It
was also influenced by the factors set out above.
As a first step we sought to examine whether there were differences between the outcomes
in the four courts which could be explained by differences between the cases coming to
those courts or by the practices in those courts.
Differences between courts
The overall outcomes of cases at their first hearing have already been presented and
discussed (see Table 6, p. 20, above). Here we examine them in relation to each individual
court. Given the possible influence of the claimant on the outcome we wanted to see how
far outcomes in cases reflected the requests made by landlords. Chart 1 below compares,
for all cases observed in the four sample courts, the requests made by the claimant for a
particular order (where recorded), and the outcomes of those requests at the first hearing. It
shows that fewer possession orders, both outright (OPO) and suspended (SPO), were
granted than requested, and more adjournments were granted than requested. (The ‘other’
category includes cases which were withdrawn, struck out, or dismissed, but the numbers in
this category are too small for any meaningful distinctions to be made between these
outcomes.)
Chart 1: Requests and outcomes in all four courts (n=540)
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
OPO SPO Adjourn Other
22
request
outcome
The following charts, 2-5 provide the same information for each court, enabling comparisons
to be made between them.