Government promises court reform before scrapping Section 21

"In response to a report from the House of Commons Housing Select Committee, which supported the NRLA’s concerns, the Government has agreed that it will not implement the new system for repossessing properties ‘until we judge sufficient progress has been made to improve the courts’.
It added: “That means we will not proceed with the abolition of section 21, until reforms to the justice system are in place.”"
Good news BUT what then is the point of debating the Bill today?
The time taken in the courts has not improved in five years and furthermore, not only is it necessary to clear the current backlog, additional resources must be provided to deal with an increase in court time needed to deal with more section 8 cases. We are talking years, not weeks or months to sort that out and I don't believe the Tories will risk not passing it before the Election and even if they don't pass it, the next Labour Government will do so without hesitation.

https://www.mortgagesolutions.co.uk/news/2022/05/03/nrla-hits-back-at-shelter-for-sensationalising-no-fault-evictions/

"Beadle emphasised that the NRLA supported the proposals to scrap Section 21"

-I doubt that is the view of most landlords.

At last some common sense. I have had years of worry AND voids out of fears of legal conflicts when letting to students or student worker groups.

Well done everyone for contributing your written or verbal input.

Bringing some sense and correcting the bias against private landlords vs the Ltd company student landlords that have been hoovering up private student landlords houses that have been hit with the double whammy of not offsetting interest costs and thus being taxed at 40% of the supposedly greater profit.

Thank you Mr Gove.
I also think a separate specialist court system would benefit from the volume of similar cases and experience with their own proven specialised system including email responses of a 21st century system with taking a leaf out of Bloombergs leaflet no pay if the computer program fails or double pay when it does so reliably to the programmers - to offset the negative incentive of putting in bugs, errors that have to be corrected later. Keeps the programming and system simpler and tighter.

1. 80% of the time as planning time for the program architecture , parties requirements routines and sub routines copying only proven best practice sections of code.

Discovering Which courts work well worldwide as the ambassadors . . . the UK's most efficient court back office staffers, UKs most efficient judges . . with also visits to the worst to get the differences in sharp contrast.

2. 20% of the time coding which is likely to be considerably improved by chat GPT.

3. As a back up contingency - instruct 2 competing contractors on architecture, flow charts and design before the programming even starts with an additional open competition rewards given for bolt on modules. Allocation of a Nominal list of names for parties with spares, which courts, judges, reserves, security, audit, automated charts finance payments, evidence, email controls, keeping it simple and robust with return copy emails to be automatically verify the entire email/message was received.

My warm wishes for a better Court system for all except the wrong doers!
I hope the Dept for Justice and Ministers see this!

Gavin Palmer

Reply to the comment left by GP at 23/10/2023 - 11:43
Sorry for auto correct my edit ran out of time. Perhaps I should be briefer!

So what’s their plan then to improve the Court system ? Answers please on the back of a postage stamp.

I read in the Times this morning that the shaddow Housing Minister Pennycook admitted that Labour previously agreed that court reform would also be necessary....
the penny dropping at last???

They may well reduce court times but I now hear that they will force mediation on us, probably manned by a housing Charity expert.

Landlords have nothing to gain from mediation and this will be the new barrier.

Reply to the comment left by GP at 23/10/2023 - 11:43
Some good ideas here but sadly nothing like my experience of delivering systems for government. E.g. For one contract, government took >12 months to work out proposals, hold the consultation and tender. Contract signature left 6-7 months for programming and delivery to strict deadline. Even then there were changes to requirements and a clarification civil servants couldn't answer.

In reality 2 contractors will double the costs. Better practise is to resolve all requirements at the tender stage, so govt has the benefit of free consultancy - no cost to the taxpayer. Then award contract to lowest-priced bidder with sharp penalties for failure.

Reply to the comment left by Paul Essex at 23/10/2023 - 13:07
Mediation is advised when agreeing a financial settlement following divorce.

I tried it. The mediator spend 5 minutes with me, 40 minutes with my ex and advised to go to court as they couldn’t see mediation working.

Mediation would be good. However, if a landlord wants/needs to sell, mediation won’t work. If a landlord needs to move in or to move a close relative in, mediation won’t work. In the case of rent arrears, access to property or antisocial behaviour, the warning letters are mediation enough.

I can’t think of a scenario where mediation might work.

Reply to the comment left by Ian Narbeth at 23/10/2023 - 10:55
The point is so that it gets carried across to the next Parliamentary session with the upcoming King's Speech. They don't want to lose any potential votes from the Shelter/Generation Rent types, but also can't stomach the droves of exiting private landlords, so trying to pour cold water onto that with this announcement.

As I'd read elsewhere, Court reform, falls under the MoJ (and/or Civil Justice Committee), but certainly not the DLUHC's remit. There hasn't even been a proposal of any changes to possession proceedings (enacted or even researched)!

It's all electioneering.