Shergroup Joins Property118 as a Sponsor

Shergroup Limited is delighted to join Property118 as a sponsor in relation to Sheriffs, Bailiffs, and all things enforcement.  The invitation to join the Property118 community comes at a time when Sheriffs, Bailiffs, High Court Enforcement Officers, and High Court Enforcement Agents are going to be needed to manage the financial impact of the COVID pandemic on landlords.

As the oldest Sheriff’s Office in the United Kingdom, starting in 1780, Shergroup, our history is one of taking the enforcement of civil court judgments and orders and creating what you know today, the Government’s private sector enforcement process.

Claire Sandbrook, as Shergroup’s CEO, was the first woman Under-Sheriff of a County (being Surrey), and a Deputy Sheriff of Greater London.  Claire qualified as a Solicitor in 1989 and set about building a practice in the London law firm of Burchell & Ruston situated in the Temple.  Mentored by the legendary, Alastair Black, CBE, DL, Claire had the opportunity to write for Halsbury’s Laws of England, Sweet & Maxwell and re-write the “Execution of a Sheriff’s Warrant”.  She has written extensively on debt recovery and enforcement and delivered numerous training courses for Central Law Training.

She pushed for the process for District Judges to exercise their discretion to allow possession orders to be enforced in the County Court as far back as 2006.  At that time, this process was not used as it was hidden away in Section 42(2) of the County Courts Act 1984.  Claire put the use of provisions into a workable process to be put in front of District Judges.  She pioneered the transfer of money claim judgments from the County Court to the High Court and was even visited by Lord Harry Woolf in her office to review for himself how access to justice was being implemented.

But her passion is really centred on the delivery of enforcement services through practical and workable solutions for court users.  Over her long career, she has watched countless squandered opportunities to improve the lot of landlords and other types of claimants.

All this heritage and history means that Shergroup is connecting with Property118 to offer solutions, guidance, and opinions on what is and is not working for landlords in the enforcement space.  One thing we can say about Claire is that she has plenty of opinions on what she sees and hears from landlords and as well as blogging about them – she looks at the process, and with her formidable network of lawyers and agents gets things done.

Your Experience

Of course, none of this is worth anything without YOU!  So, we’ve shared our credentials – now how about you?  What’s happening in your part of the landlord world?  We can only imagine that many of you are stuck.  Stuck with tenants you can’t seem to evict, stuck with mounting rent arrears, and stuck with county bailiff eviction appointments which are running into weeks if not months ahead.

So, what we would like to do is to start and gather all your insight into what is happening in the Courts and what sort of frustration are you experiencing?

Here are a few things we would like to know about |

1. How long County Courts are taking to give you an eviction appointment – please add a comment with the name of the court, and the length of time for an appointment
2. Are you making your application to transfer your Possession Order under Section 42(2) in your claim form, and get your Order at the end of the hearing?
3. Which Courts are you finding are prepared to make those Orders?
4. If you made your application to transfer the enforcement of your Possession Order after the Judge made the final Order, did you find a judge who was prepared to make that Order – and please tell us which Court and which judge if you feel you can

Building an Enforcement Survey for Landlords

What we intend to do with all your information is to build a tracker of what is really going on in the civil courts and publish it on the net to get it maximum coverage to demonstrate the gaps in the system.

We want to know about which Judges and Courts are prepared to exercise their discretion in favour of a landlord, and which aren’t.  Are we going to see some trends?  The answer has to be yes – and we hope from compiling all this data we can build a more accurate picture about where the justice system is supporting landlords, and where it isn’t.

We will build a landing page on our website so that we can collect all the information in the form of a survey along with the base data to use to lobby for better services for landlords.

Help Today for Landlords

Finally, we can see from our own landlord clients that you as a community are suffering today from the impact of the pandemic.  But we think you could be missing a trick.  Have you ever thought about collecting in the rent arrears from your client’s using a simple money claim?  No, it doesn’t end up with a possession order – you get a County Court Judgment for the amount outstanding, but it also means you get a knock on the door of your tenant to collect the debt from a High Court Enforcement Officer.

We are encouraging our clients to do this now as we can see the Government continuing to kick the “eviction can” down the road for a bit longer.

Summing Up

Suffice to say in joining your community, Shergroup intends to help build the data to help lobby for a fairer deal for landlords from the Government.  It’s not going to be a quick fix and, in the meantime,, we can help you with more immediate ways to get your rent paid and in your bank account.  We are seeing a slight uptick in eviction appointments as landlords start to use our service for the recovery of residential property.

We are here to help you and we have made it extremely easy for you to contact us via the form below.

We are so excited to be finally able to dig in and get going with real solutions which serve you in your life as a property professional.

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