Evicting tenants using The Sheriffs Office – the landlord’s experience

8:23 AM, 5th August 2015, About 9 years ago 2

Text Size

Neil Mukherjee, landlord, kindly shared with us his step by step experience of using High Court enforcement to repossess his property from tenants who had ignored a court order to move out. We were able to evict the tenant quickly and hope Neil’s experience will help other landlords to consider transferring their possession order up to the High Court for enforcement (under Section 42 of the County Courts Act 1984).

Step 1

I issued a Section 21 notice and the N5b claim form. A court order was issued for the tenant to move out by 29th July 2014.

Step 2

As the tenant did not leave by that date, I put my case on the Residential Landlords Association forum and started to gather information regarding my options. I found lots of good help and links on the forum. Basically at this stage I had two options.

One option was to use a N325 and use the county court bailiff, which normally takes two to three months. The other option was to use the High Court Enforcement Officer (HCEO) to evict the tenant, which can be done within a week once the writ 66 is issued by the High Court. So I decided to go via HCEO route rather than the county court route.

Step 3

To use the HCEO route the case has to be transferred to the High Court by using the form N244. Normally one has to wait for the outcome of the N244 before submitting a N293A and the Writ 66.

In my case, I was using the St. Helens court, which is a combined court, i.e. district court and county court. The Sheriffs Office suggested I submit all the three forms together to speed up the process. That’s what I did,

On Thursday 7th August I submitted the three forms (N244, N293A, Writ 66) and paid the court fee. All the forms were filled in by The Sheriffs Office and emailed to me for signing.

Step 4

On Saturday 9th August I received a report from the court to say that my case has been transferred to the High Court. Also at the same time they sent back the sealed Writ 66 and signed N293A. So I received all the necessary documents from the court on Saturday 9th August.

Step 5

I posted the original N293A and WRIT 66 back to The Sheriffs Office using special delivery the same day and The Sheriffs Office received the original documents on Monday the 11th August. They made the eviction appointment for Wednesday, 13th August at 8am.

Step 6

My wife and I went to the property at 8am on Wednesday, 13th August 2014. The Sheriffs Office eviction team and the locksmith were there. The enforcement agents knocked on the door a few times before the tenant opened the door. We were outside in the car.

Within 20 minutes the tenant was out. The locksmith changed the locks and the enforcement agent put notices on the door and the window and gave us the new keys. Everything was completed within 45 minutes.

Share This Article

Comments

David Griffith

13:09 PM, 5th August 2015, About 9 years ago

Interesting article, thanks for sharing. I have a couple of questions regarding the process:-

1) Can a money order be executed the same time by seizing possessions?
2) Do all HCEOs insist on giving notice to the tenant that they will be attending?
The one I used did.

Report Comment Reply

David Asker

14:39 PM, 5th August 2015, About 9 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "David Griffith" at "05/08/2015 - 13:09":

Hi David,

In answer to your first question that will depend. When intending to enforce for a monetary sum, all Enforcement Agents must now send a "Notice of Enforcement" to the debtor giving them 7 clear days (not Sundays or Bank Holidays) to make payment in full. Enforcement against goods cannot happen until the expiry of this notice.

Therefore to enforce at the same time as the eviction the debtor would have had to of received the Notice 7 clear days previously. If that is the case then yes the goods can be seized.

However, in many residential properties the goods are not of a significant enough value to warrant seizing, removing and selling so every case must be dealt with on its merits.

We would usually advise to get your property back first and consider enforcing against goods at a later date when the debtor has been traced.

Coming to the 2nd point, HCEOs currently do not have to give notice of a impending eviction. Some HCEOs insist that you do (as in your case) but we leave that option with the landlord advising them as to the pros and cons of each.

Regards, David.
The Sheriffs Office

Report Comment Reply

Leave Comments

In order to post comments you will need to Sign In or Sign Up for a FREE Membership

Continue with Facebook

Continue with Twitter

Username/Email Address

Password

Remember Me

Forgotten your password?

Don't have an account? Sign Up

“Account”	means an account required to access and/or use certain areas and features of Our Site;
“Cookie”	means a small text file placed on your computer or device by Our Site when you visit certain parts of Our Site and/or when you use certain features of Our Site. Details of the Cookies used by Our Site are set out in section 13, below;
“Cookie Law”	means the relevant parts of the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003;
“personal data”	means any and all data that relates to an identifiable person who can be directly or indirectly identified from that data. In this case, it means personal data that you give to Us via Our Site. This definition shall, where applicable, incorporate the definitions provided in the EU Regulation 2016/679 – the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”); and
“We/Us/Our”	Means Property118 Ltd , a limited company registered in England under company number 10295964, whose registered address is 1st Floor, Woburn House, 84 St Benedicts Street, Norwich, NR2 4AB.

Name of Cookie	Purpose	Strictly Necessary
JSESSIONID	Used only to collect performance data, with any identifiable data obfuscated	No
__cfduid	This cookie is strictly necessary for Cloudflare's security features and cannot be turned off.	Yes

Name of Cookie	First / Third Party	Provider	Purpose
__utma, __utmb, __utmc, __utmt, __utmz	First	Google	Helps to understand how their visitors engage with our website
_fbp	First	Facebook	Helps to understand how their visitors engage with our website