Is a lawyer required for lodging possession order?

Hi, sometimes it can be wise to use the services of a solicitor, but it depends on the solicitor that you choose as some solicitors can just charge and do a poor job creating delays.

If your tenant has £4000 arrears, I would assume that this is more than 2 months arrears and therefore serving a section 21 notice would not be the correct notice as you cannot secure a monetary judgement against the tenant for the arrears. Also a section 21 notice is a no fault eviction notice that provides the tenant with 2 months notice and you would be expected to evidence that your tenants were provided with all prescribed information. Depending on your agent (if they put in the tenant), they may not be able to provide documentary evidence that the gas cert, how to rent guide and other information was served and this may provide the tenant with an opportunity to defend the action.

Serving a section 8 for rent arrears of more than 2 months allows you to rely on ground 8 which is mandatory possession. You only provide 14 days notice (best to give 17 days to allow for service) and then you complete the possession papers and prepare a witness statement exhibiting your AST, rent statement and any other information.

The court fee is £355.00 and if you have paid your agent £720 in other fees, then this would raise some questions as filing for possession is reserved legal activity. Whilst they can have administrative costs for gathering the information and providing a witness statement for you, they cannot charge you legal fees for their services. They cannot sign the claim forms for you, you have to sign them, whereas a solicitors can sign the claim form as your legal representative.

Hope this helps you

Reply to the comment left by Neil Heffey at 14/12/2023 - 12:57
Hi Neil,

Thanks for your reply.
Possession order stage is due to tenant failed to move out at expiry of section 21.

This is Agent's reply:

The fees for proceeding with any case (whether it be possession, rent arrears, etc) through our legal team is charged as follows;

£355 court fee – this is the cost for a judge to oversee the case and make a ruling
£600 + VAT – this is a fee charged by our legal team for them to prepare the case for the court, which includes overseeing of documentation, arranging the hearing by liaising with the court, etc.

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Regards,
Kin

Reply to the comment left by Kin Wang at 14/12/2023 - 15:41
Hi Kin, if they engage a solicitors for you which they refer to as their legal team, then a fee of £600 plus VAT is probably a reasonable rate if it includes the attendance at the court hearing.

If you do use the section 21 procedure, it is not as straight forward as it once was. The defendant gets sent a defence form asking them if they agree with each and every point regarding service of documentation. The defendant only has to tick boxes to advise that they disagree and then the onus would be on you to prove that they were in fact served with documentary evidence.

When evicting using the section 8 procedure, it is not necessary to have to provide all of the prescribed information, and/or evidence it. If it is 8 weeks arrears then mandatory ground 8 is made out and the court must make the order for possession unless the tenant has a counterclaim for disrepair.

If the tenant is employed, after using the section 8 procedure you secure a county court judgement for the arrears and can then recover the funds by applying for an attachment of earnings, but this is only if the defendant is employed. If the defendant is on benefits, you will never likely be able to recover the amount outstanding.

Thanks Neil for your helpful advice.
To clarify regarding section 8, since tenant is too cunning and they'll make payment to keep it under 8 weeks to make section 8 void. Therefore will it make it impossible to evict them or take them to court?
Also not sure can I still serve section 8 after serving section 21? What's the pros and cons of this?

You make a good point of is the fees includes the attendance at the court hearing. If it's not, does it mean it's too high?

Thank you so much for your advice!
Regards,
Kin

Go and seek proper legal advice or you are digging a big legal problem for yourself.

Reply to the comment left by Kin Wang at 14/12/2023 - 21:42
Solicitors generally charge per hour, but some will do a fixed fee for a specified amount of work. It would be important to use the right solicitors and you can usually check on the reviews to see if other clients have been happy with the solicitors.

If you have never been involved in issuing proceedings, you would be wise to use a solicitor as mistakes can be costly. From what details you have given, it would be my preference to issue on the back of a section 8, you can serve both section 8 and 21.

If your tenant pays some of the amount to bring the arrears under 2 months, then you can rely on grounds 10 and 11 which are discretionary grounds. Would it not be a good thing if the tenant paid?

If you have house insurance which some mortgage companies insist upon, check your policy as a lot of the time, evictions can be covered under the policy and the insurers would stipulate a specific solicitors that they would want you to use. This could save you a lot of headache and protect you against any adverse costs if things were to go wrong.

Reply to the comment left by Neil Heffey at 14/12/2023 - 12:57
I agree we have just evicted one tenant and have possession order for another just waiting for the warrant . Total cost for each tenant was £486. Evicted s tenant in 2021 using solicitors total including lost rent was about 20,000
Would never use solicitors to evict way to expensive

Reply to the comment left by Neil Heffey at 15/12/2023 - 08:19
Thank Neil and great advice.
I will look into section 8 too just in case then.

Regarding insurance bit, it's a shame that it's a flat so it's the management company will have the insurance.

I will get in touch if any issue and thanks for your great insights on this issue again. You're such a valuable gem for this forum. Have a great day.

Regards,
Kin

Reply to the comment left by Christopher Carzanz at 15/12/2023 - 08:56
Hi Chris,

Thanks for the info and glad to hear that you've evicted your trouble tenant successfully.

Wondering the point that you mentioned using solicitors total including lost rent was about 20,000, is 80% of 20,000 here is mailly from legal fees or rent?

Regards,
Kin

Reply to the comment left by Neil Heffey at 14/12/2023 - 17:35
Hi Neil,

Apparently this fee of £600 plus VAT doesn't include the attendance at the court hearing yet but only for filling & submission alone ( in addition to £355 application fees).
Therefore wondering is the fees too high for submission alone?

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Regards,
Kin