Why is the county court so slow?

I see some courts have now closed because of the threat of concrete dropping on thier heads, another excuse, another delaying tactic

The situation is nearing the place where both landlords and tenants lose confidence in the Courts and legal system. History teaches us when that happens we just see massive rise in non compliance .
Our legal system rests on majority consent. But if delays and lack of enforcment continue to create such injustices .. the law abiding landlords will leave the sector which will be abandoned to the cowboys, the thugs , the dogers and the exploiters who never comply with the courts or pay the fines levied on them. It's time to make sure the rule of law works again.

Reply to the comment left by Mark Smith at 04/09/2023 - 13:19
I have little doubt that great inroads will come if the governments of the day (it's BOTH parties!!) did the following:
1 Remember their duty is to keep us safe and attend to that duty
2 Sue Braverman will please return to the back benches and we get someone competent and energetic in her place - that could be a sixth move for Mr Shapps and back to where he was before for about 5 days??!
3 Stop standing upside down in quicksand and shouting at underfunded and demoralised troops to Do More For Less!

Reply to the comment left by Mark Smith at 04/09/2023 - 13:19@Mark Smith
Are you the head of Chambers at Cotswold barristers? If so, your comment about loss of confidence in the courts and legal system carries some weight. It echoes thoughts I have been having for several years.
I am in my seventies and have had the good fortune to live in a country (the UK) and an era when if one did not voluntarily join the armed forces there was an excellent and historically unusual opportunity to live a full three-score-years-and-ten life with no need to even consider the possibility of violence - it was such a remote possibility.
I do not think this applies now. I see a multitude of indicators that society is breaking down and splitting apart. I think that the curses of violence and corruption are coming down upon us and one of the reasons is that the legal system (the laws, the police, and the courts) is falling apart.
I do not think any of the landlords who habituate this forum will ever resort to paying thugs to break the legs of tenants who fail to pay their rent, and I would never do that myself, but I am really quite certain that landlords for whom leg-breaking is a routine modus operandi will emerge as a result of the forces which are evicting good landlords from the PRS.
The way the PRS will operate in the future will be very different from what it is now. There will be a lot of hand-wringing and virtuous statements about actions to bring things back under control but these will be pure piffle and hogwash. When the laws, the police, and the courts fail to protect law-abiding citizens power will always fall into the hands of the unlawful.
And of course that is how civilisations falter and eventually die.

Reply to the comment left by Michael Crofts at 04/09/2023 - 21:51
Sage indeed. As a solicitor admitted too many years ago to admit and involved in litigation, I sought to address the purely technical reasons for despair. I suggested the root cause is the penny pinching attitude of successive governments since Margaret Thatcher came into office.
Bottom line’ has been the mantra?

Reply to the comment left by Blodwyn at 04/09/2023 - 22:46@Blodwyn - I'm not sure that penny pinching is the entire explanation. I fear there have been three other influences on the legal system during the last 50 or 60 years. One is a destructive influence, infiltrating all our institutions. propagated by people who see only evil in us and our way of life. These people wish to destroy our society. The second influence is complacency - an assumption prevalent among the PPE types, that we are a stable, rich country and we can therefore expect things to carry on as they have been without putting in any effort to make sure that is so. The third influence is somewhat hard to pin down but I see it as forgetfulness. We have forgotten 1688 and what that gave us. I believe (with sadness) that if these influences so damage our legal system that the Law cannot be relied upon to settle disputes according to the precepts of good jurisprudence, with due recognition to the maxim that justice delayed is justice denied, then the leg-breakers will take over. I offer a trivial example, not of leg-breaking, but direct action of a less violent kind. My wife and I own a small farm. A neighbour started developing their land and erected scaffolding across the fence, on our land, without asking for permission. When challenged the scaffolders were abusive. I consulted our solicitor and was advised that there was nothing which could be done – the cost of an action for trespass and the delays would be untenable. His advice (for which I paid) was wrong. There was something which could be done, at midnight, with a cordless angle grinder (like felling a ULEZ camera which of course I have not done and would never do).

Reply to the comment left by Michael Crofts at 04/09/2023 - 21:51
No there are unsurprisingly two Mark Smiths 🙂