Section 42 uplift (HCEO) evictions, I want to start a campaign. Who's in?

princeofpounds

hmmm are you getting confused about something?

after the possession order is granted there is a wait period before eviction

it goes to court and the court grants a possession order. It states a day that the tenant must leave (normally 14 days from the date of the order).

No, not confused at all - the point I was making was a general one, that we should have a gap between verdict and eviction.

It was in response to a number of previous posts that basically said 'the tenant has enough notice and the process has already been going on for months, so chuck them out'. I was pointing out that even if you believe the process should be quicker, to be fair to landlords, you do need a gap.

I think the whole process should be fairly rapid (3 months in total, but that's an opinion, not a dogmatic point) but that we should solve the problem of balancing proper notice for tenants and speed for the landlord by minimising the time between court application and verdict, rather than the period between verdict and eviction.

thesaint

princeofpounds wrote: »

No, not confused at all - the point I was making was a general one, that we should have a gap between verdict and eviction.

You seem to be doing a good impression of someone who is confused.
There is a gap!

Generally 2 weeks. and up to 6 weeks if the tenant requests it.
I don't even(I suspect most landlords don't)ask for a hearing if a tenant requests 6 weeks.
Do you think after the tenant has asked the court for a 6 week suspension they leave? Hell no, I still have to appoint bailiffs.

princeofpounds

You seem to be doing a good impression of someone who is confused.
There is a gap!

I will say it again - my post was in response to the people in the thread stating that eviction should be as soon as possible given that tenants had plenty of notice prior to the court date that the landlord wanted them out.


That is why I started the whole post with 'a lot of people are not always thinking this process through clearly'. It was a response to people's opinions.


I know there is usually a gap between verdict and the court ordering possession. I was in my own eviction process once upon a time involving a mortgage company and an AWOL landlord, so I had to look into how the process worked in case it came to the crunch (it didn't in the end, thankfully).


I wasn't clear on whether standard practice was one week or two weeks, or one month, which is why I avoided discussing the specifics of the time period, but then I was also entirely aware that the HCEOs don't zoom over to the property five minutes after the verdict is handed down. You will notice I don't endorse the OP's desire to end the HCEO route at all, and that is why.


The points are very simple:


I would defend the principle of having a delay between verdict and eviction, because not all cases are clear-cut.


I would defend the rights of landlords to be able to recover properties within a reasonable amount of time, which I feel is 3 months after application unless the property is under immediate threat (and this period of time does NOT include section 21 notice periods).


And if the recoveries are straying over a reasonable amount of time, then we should be looking at shortening the time between court application and verdict, rather than verdict and eviction.

mrginge

princeofpounds wrote: »

I will say it again - my post was in response to the people in the thread stating that eviction should be as soon as possible given that tenants had plenty of notice prior to the court date that the landlord wanted them out.

So you think that eviction should not be 'as soon as possible'?

Given that 'as soon as possible' already involves a defined gap, plus an uplift process defined in the link further up the thread, then I can only assume that you want to add another delay on top.

princeofpounds

So you think that eviction should not be 'as soon as possible'?

Yes. It should be as soon as possible after giving adequate notice to arrange onward accommodation for someone who had a good faith case that was only determined on the balance of probabilities. Is 14 days adequate for this?


I would prefer it to be longer in theory, about a month, but I would only see this as acceptable if the gap between court application and verdict was shortened by at least that amount, so barring that theoretical scenarios, yes 14 days is an adequate balance between being fair to both sides.

Given that 'as soon as possible' already involves a defined gap, plus an uplift process defined in the link further up the thread, then I can only assume that you want to add another delay on top.

This is the bit I just don't get. As you clearly state, that's your assumption, not what I said.


I said that I would like to see the time between application and verdict shortened, and that I didn't think a modest post-verdict wait is an important issue to tackle. It feels like you heard the latter part of the point without recognising the importance of the prior part.


I will repeat again, I specifically do not oppose the HCEO route. Never have. I have advised people to use it in the past.


What I said was

It is not wise to have instant evictions subsequent to a verdict.

I never said that is what we have right now. It is possible to argue against a point of view rather than the status quo, you know. You seem to want to interpret it that way, as if you are looking for an opponent that doesn't exist.

mrginge

I'm just wondering why you are accusing other posters of saying something that they haven't.

cloo

I do think that the current 'wait until you're evicted' system for help from LAs is wrong for everyone. It makes everything last minute for everyone, throws tenants into homelessness when there could be other solutions, it forces LLs to be the 'bad guys' when I imagine most would hate the idea of making their tenants homeless if they need their property back or sold, and it sets everyone at odds because tenants can't leave until they're evicted if they can't find at alternative (and it's easy for LLs to forget that getting a rental place isn't as easy as all that, especially if you have kids in a school that you need to stay near).


I'm saying this as a former LL myself.


I do understand to some extent - LAs are massively underfunded and understaffed, they're not at the moment capable of offering a solution until the situation is critical.


There is no 'side' that is the 'bad guys' here (although at various times, individual tenants, LLs or authorities can be bad), it's just a terrible and underfunded system.

princeofpounds

it's just a terrible and underfunded system.

You often hear this - it's underfunded. As if throwing more money at the same number of houses will somehow solve accommodation problems.


In reality, two things would actually help solve the root problem. One would be to actually permit more housing. Councils protest about how hard it is to house everyone, but people would find it a lot easier if councils actually let them build housing.


Who the 'them' is almost doesn't matter - more council houses, landlords, commercial builders, self-builders. Everyone has a preferred mix but chucking more money into the sector does nothing but push prices up if it cannot stimulate more supply.


The other would be to close the difference between private rentals and social housing, both in terms of cost and in terms of security of tenure.


The only reason otherwise normal people willingly endure an eviction process with no self-help to try to get a social house is because they know that once they get in, they have a lifetime (indeed even inheritable) tenancy at pretty attractive rates (although the gap is not as large as it used to be).


Again, everyone has their own idea of how this might best be done. I happen to believe that private rentals are too insecure, and that social tenancies are overly-generous. But if people were more agnostic about which form of housing to pursue, then they would be just as likely to go and sort themselves out rather than drag private LLs through an unnecessary process.


It's classic economics really - if you restrict supply of a good and the supply a certain amount of the good at market-beating terms, this is exactly the sort of result you should expect to get.