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

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post; levels of confidence placed in those representatives; and the nature of the claimant as a ‘social landlord’. 55
Chapter 6: Judges and tenants Introduction In this chapter we examine the value judges placed on the attendance of tenants and the impact of the individual circumstances of the tenant. Analysis of the transcripts of interviews with judges combined with findings from the survey of court cases revealed that there were a number of cross cutting themes associated with judges’ relationships with tenants which impacted on decision-making in a diverse range of ways. This section explores the impact of these themes under the following headings: Attendance/non attendance Level of arrears and tenants’ efforts to deal with the problem Family makeup and recognition of house as home Language difficulties Issues around infirmity, health and age of defendant Judges are human too – personal reactions to hearings. Attendance Earlier studies have shown that participation by defendants and in particular their attendance at the court hearing has a decisive impact on outcomes (Nixon et al 1996). The survey of court cases confirms that attendance matters. In practice just less than half of all defendants (45%) participated in the judicial process with 42% attending the hearing in person. In these cases the profile of outcomes was found to be more favourable to tenants as compared with the outcomes achieved when the tenant did not attend (see further Chapter 3). Further evidence of the importance of attendance was provided by the claimant and defendant focus groups with the majority of participants citing attendance as the single most important influence on judges. Participants in all focus groups felt that the defendant’s attendance was a key influence on the outcome, leading to district judges being then more willing to exercise their discretion in the tenant’s favour. Both claimant and defendant representatives agreed that if the tenant did not attend, then the claimant would be more likely to obtain the order they requested. In interviews with judges we sought to establish why attendance by the defendant was considered to be so important. No single or consistent explanation was provided; rather we found there to be a wide range of different reasons why judges thought the attendance or 56
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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
Page 17 and 18: Northern 1 court hears over 1500 ho
Page 19 and 20: significance to a particular respon
Page 21 and 22: The application may be adjourned; t
Page 23 and 24: such forms are completed in less th
Page 25 and 26: In November 2001, the Legal Service
Page 27 and 28: Levels of arrears Although the reas
Page 29 and 30: Table 2: Rent levels from ODPM stat
Page 31 and 32: Table 5: Changes in outcomes of ini
Page 33 and 34: Table 6: Impact of participation on
Page 35 and 36: The focus group participants consid
Page 37 and 38: consideration in this chapter, the
Page 39 and 40: Neither of the judges seemed to con
Page 41 and 42: chambers, where the possession list
Page 43 and 44: Most of the district judges felt th
Page 45 and 46: The views of the claimants’ group
Page 47 and 48: Qualitative and quantitative data f
Page 49 and 50: anything to say, and wants to stay
Page 51 and 52: Table 7: Sources of training and up
Page 53 and 54: sought with what they know the judg
Page 55 and 56: Chapter 5: Judges and landlords Int
Page 57 and 58: Chart 7: Orders granted by requests
Page 59 and 60: some unevenness in the impact of re
Page 61 and 62: Thus it can be seen that the type o
Page 63 and 64: District judges differed on how muc
Page 65 and 66: There were three other, more genera
Page 67: Conclusions In this chapter, we hav
Page 71 and 72: approach he was more confident in t
Page 73 and 74: “I think in terms of exercising d
Page 75 and 76: 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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110
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Lawrence J (1995) “Sentencing pro
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give a typology of the characterist
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In analysing cases percentages have
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Appendix 2 - Research instruments 1
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What factors would you ascribe thos
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20. Typically, how would you descri
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with a duty desk representative who
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DCA Research Series No. 6/05 The ex
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