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

The quantitative data from the four courts does seem to bear out the importance of tenant
participation in possession hearings. In London court, with the highest participation rate,
there was a higher proportion of requests for adjournments, and of adjournments as the
outcome of initial hearings. Northern 2 court, with the lowest proportion of representation,
had both the lowest proportion of adjournments requested and granted, and the highest
proportion of possession orders (outright and suspended) requested and granted in all the
four courts. The impact of housing benefit, as stated above, should also be taken into
account here. The reasons why ‘the physical reality’ of the tenant’s presence might be so
important are discussed further in Chapter 6, below.
Type of landlord
Local authorities tend to be repeat players (for the effect of this, see Galanter (1974) and
further discussion in Chapter 5), with their representatives attending the same court week
after week, while a housing association might have very few cases in any particular court
over the course of a year. This could have an effect both on the expertise of the landlord’s
representative, and also on the trust placed in them by the district judge. This is illustrated
by the following comment:
“Others are more amateur, and sort of obviously perhaps don’t come to court as
much or, to give them the benefit of the doubt, they perhaps go to quite a number of
different courts and get different expectations, so they’re a bit confused about what
anyone might want. I mean it’s obviously an advantage for people in that situation to
be coming to the same court all the time. They really do get used to what we want.”
(DJ F)
The most striking example of a close relationship with a repeat player was at Northern 2
court, where an established practice had been developed with the local authority landlord (it
was noticeable that this practice did not apply to other social landlords bringing cases to this
court). In Northern 2 the tenant and the local authority (the largest social landlord in the
jurisdiction) will agree the outcome of the case by meeting in the court building before the
case is called in to the judge's chambers:
“The arrangement here is that the housing officers sees the tenants outside first [...]
and will reach an arrangement with them. [...] on a standard local authority, local
authority rent possession list, it would be exceptional to see a tenant.” (DJ Y)
This convention adopted for dealing with claims by the major social landlord was described
in very positive terms:
“The reason we can get through a very heavy list is that they go and talk to everyone
who's here and I would have said in 80% or 90% of cases they'll come in saying,
'we've talked to so-and-so and she's agreed to pay this, and we're happy to have a
suspended order on that basis.' So there are very few really, where you end up with
the tenant coming in.” (DJ F)
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