Witness statement

lincroft1710

Forced to live elsewhere because you were evicted doesn't equate to the property being unavailable.


For how long did you live in the property and for how many months are you in arrears? The landlord has no obligation to pay any removal costs.


The type of compensation you are seeking is not quantifiable and therefore Small Claims procedure cannot be used. Instituting such a claim will be costly and you probably won't get anything anyway and you are already in financial hardship.

Slithery

Mojito1 said:

Had they paid, there would never have been any rent arrears, so any alleged breach of contract by myself was caused / induced directly by them.

No. It was directly caused by you failing to pay the contracted rent.

Mojito1 said:

The cooker and shower were not fixed at all for the entire time I lived there.

There is a specific legal procedure you need to follow if the LL refuses to do repairs...

https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/repairs/doing_the_repairs_if_your_landlord_wont

Did you do this?

Mojito1 said:

I paid for digital aerial installation myself as they refused to pay, so was without use of TV for about 1-2 weeks.

Was the availability of a digital TV aerial mentioned in your contract? If not the LL was under no obligation to provide one.

Mojito1 said:

What amounts do you think I should claim for? I want to claim every penny they have for what they have done to me. 

You can only claim for provable financial losses. What were these?

But from what you've written so far unfortunately I don't think you stand a chance of claiming anything. Sorry.

Mojito1

Slithery said:

Mojito1 said:

Had they paid, there would never have been any rent arrears, so any alleged breach of contract by myself was caused / induced directly by them.

No. It was directly caused by you failing to pay the contracted rent.

I was served eviction notice solely in retaliation for contacting them about disrepairs, before there were any rent arrears. I paid over £5000 rent when I shouldn't have had to pay any at all. The property and terms of tenancy was not as was previously agreed, so I think you will find they were in breach, not me.

Mojito1 said:

The cooker and shower were not fixed at all for the entire time I lived there.

There is a specific legal procedure you need to follow if the LL refuses to do repairs...

https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/repairs/doing_the_repairs_if_your_landlord_wont

Did you do this?

No, I already answered this previously.

Mojito1 said:

I paid for digital aerial installation myself as they refused to pay, so was without use of TV for about 1-2 weeks.

Was the availability of a digital TV aerial mentioned in your contract? If not the LL was under no obligation to provide one.

Well yes, TV points were included on the inventory, so one would have a reasonable expectation to expect them to work. Why should I have to pay to improve landlords property.

Mojito1 said:

What amounts do you think I should claim for? I want to claim every penny they have for what they have done to me. 

You can only claim for provable financial losses. What were these?

But from what you've written so far unfortunately I don't think you stand a chance of claiming anything. Sorry.

Well it's all provable, including the harassment, stalking and mental distress. Sorry, but negative responses are really not helpful to me at all. The situation is what it is and I am really struggling mentally at the moment, so really need some positive advice, to give my claim the best possible chance of success.

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Mojito1

lincroft1710 said:

Forced to live elsewhere because you were evicted doesn't equate to the property being unavailable.


For how long did you live in the property and for how many months are you in arrears? The landlord has no obligation to pay any removal costs.


The type of compensation you are seeking is not quantifiable and therefore Small Claims procedure cannot be used. Instituting such a claim will be costly and you probably won't get anything anyway and you are already in financial hardship.

Oh I do believe the landlord did have an obligation to pay my removal costs, as the property & tenancy was not as was agreed

lincroft1710

Mojito1 said:

lincroft1710 said:

Forced to live elsewhere because you were evicted doesn't equate to the property being unavailable.


For how long did you live in the property and for how many months are you in arrears? The landlord has no obligation to pay any removal costs.


The type of compensation you are seeking is not quantifiable and therefore Small Claims procedure cannot be used. Instituting such a claim will be costly and you probably won't get anything anyway and you are already in financial hardship.

Oh I do believe the landlord did have an obligation to pay my removal costs, as the property & tenancy was not as was agreed

Can you back up your belief with any enabling legislation?

turnitround

I really dont think you are taking any notice of the help you are being given. No one is going to tell you that you have a chance of success with this and it would not be helpful for them to do so even though its seems to be what you want to hear.

You say you paid over 5000 when you should have paid none but that is not the case. Of course you should have paid rent and you should also have followed the procedure to get the landlord to do repairs. Unless you did this your case would be thrown out anyway.

Likewise the financial losses. You may be able to prove harassment etc but these are not financial losses.

Please listen to what people are telling you because to continue down the path you are going is only going to give you more stress and could end up with significant costs which you will have to bear.

You cannot win this, please dont make things worse for yourself.

Mojito1

MysteryMe said:

https://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/standard-directions/general/witness-statements

This link gives advice on how to structure a statement of truth (civil statement)  you could use your old address and say this is the address relevant to the claim.

Keep your narrative factual. Use short paragraphs and numbering each paragraph. Don't waffle or use emotive language, don't give opinions stick to the facts.

Everything that is relevant to your claim should be provided to the court. It may assist if you give each document a unique reference eg Mojito/1, Mojito/2 then at the end of your narrative list and describe all the documents you are providing the court and write the relevant reference alongside it. It is important that you number each page of the statement and end the statement with  'I believe that the facts stated in this witness statement are true.'  Then sign and date it.

I am not able to offer any further advice, sorry. 

Thank you. The most recent court order states that another hearing will be arranged with time allocated of 45 mins. Is this hearing just to decide if appeal will be allowed, and then another hearing arranged after that? Or will this be the actual hearing to hear the entire claim / defence / counterclaim?

The judge has asked for a witness statement solely regarding medical reasons / evidence as to why I wasn't able to meet previous deadline for filing. I am still a bit confused, will this hearing be solely to decide if I am allowed to appeal, or should I also be filing all other evidence at the same time before this hearing, or would that be a later hearing?

newsgroupmonkey_

Mojito1 said:

lincroft1710 said:

Forced to live elsewhere because you were evicted doesn't equate to the property being unavailable.


For how long did you live in the property and for how many months are you in arrears? The landlord has no obligation to pay any removal costs.


The type of compensation you are seeking is not quantifiable and therefore Small Claims procedure cannot be used. Instituting such a claim will be costly and you probably won't get anything anyway and you are already in financial hardship.

Oh I do believe the landlord did have an obligation to pay my removal costs, as the property & tenancy was not as was agreed

I'm really sorry, it really doesn't work like that. You can't claim for costs that are not agreed.

The landlord is suing you because you agreed to pay X amount per month. You can argue that you didn't get what you were paying for, so you should only owe Y amount per month. You can't say "I know I owe you X, but I'm not paying it. And in addition, I want Z off you".

A landlord can serve you an S21 for any reason. It could be because he just didn't like you. As long as he didn't evict you because of protected characteristics (i.e. because of your colour, sex, disabilities etc.). And yes, under the current law, revenge evictions are legal.

If you were out of work, I take it you were claiming benefits?

I'll let Slithery respond because I feel like I'm being really mean and I'm trying not to be - I'm trying to get you to accept that you're not going to get what you want from this. As has been mentioned above, you can only claim what's quantifiable and expected from a Landlord. Mental health, stress and so on does not unfortunately have a price, so you need to take a different court avenue which involves expensive lawyers.

I would also heavily recommend giving Shelter a call. They're used to stuff like this, but please please please, listen to what they say.

Slithery

newsgroupmonkey_ said:

I'll let Slithery respond because I feel like I'm being really mean and I'm trying not to be

I'm not trying to be mean either, purely factual. It's the legal actuality of the situation that will be of most help to the OP, even if it isn't what they want to hear.

Mojito1

turnitround said:

I really dont think you are taking any notice of the help you are being given. No one is going to tell you that you have a chance of success with this and it would not be helpful for them to do so even though its seems to be what you want to hear. Sympathise with the landlord all you like. I have a right to quiet enjoyment of my home and decent living conditions for a property I was paying a lot of my hard earned money to rent.

You say you paid over 5000 when you should have paid none but that is not the case. Of course you should have paid rent and you should also have followed the procedure to get the landlord to do repairs. Unless you did this your case would be thrown out anyway. I wasn't aware of this procedure and doubt any judge in their right mind would throw a case out solely because I didn't follow a specific procedure. Under the circumstances, my priority at the time was my health and trying to move out.

Likewise the financial losses. You may be able to prove harassment etc but these are not financial losses. Yes it is a financial loss if it prevents somebody being able to earn a living in order to pay their rent. 

Please listen to what people are telling you because to continue down the path you are going is only going to give you more stress and could end up with significant costs which you will have to bear. Yes this is extremely stressful. Having bailiffs terrorising me at my new home and seizing my belongings would be even more stressful.  

You cannot win this, please dont make things worse for yourself. Are you a private landlord?

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