Council Advice to Tenants Being Lawfully Evicted

Council Advice to Tenants Being Lawfully Evicted

A VOLA position statement

Context:     

 With the shortage of Social and PRS Housing becoming ever more acute, Housing Advisors such as Local Councils are increasing advising Tenants who have been ordered by a Court to vacate a Property, to ignore this and wait until every further Legal Process has been exhausted, often until the day when Bailiffs arrive at the Property to enforce the Repossession.

Advising Tenants to ignore a Court Order is clearly unacceptable for an Institutional Body to contemplate anyway and is also poor advice, which often, does them a disservice.

Ignoring Court Orders can have a long term, negative implications such as poor Credit References, further indebtedness and subsequently, further Legal action. Plus, in cases involving ASB, the wider consequences for long suffering neighbours and Communities are unacceptable. When considering the current average timeline for Landlords claiming and regaining possession of a Property is now more than 68 weeks, the effect of irresponsible guidance is obvious.

Law abiding Landlords also suffer unfairly, with often unaffordable Rent Arrears (average unpaid rent at the point of Eviction, now being £12,708 and £19,233 in London).

VOLA Position 

Evictions cannot always be avoided and unhelpful Policies and advice often leads to further Costs and Problems for everybody involved. Often a Short-Term fix is wrongly suggested to simply prolong the duration before the Problem must be addressed.

Better Guidance for Tenants by Institutions, Councils and Housing Advisors is beneficial for several reasons:

·         Educating parties facing eviction to realistically understand the longer-term consequences of ignoring Court Orders.

·         Assisting in resolving underlying problems at an earlier stage rather than encouraging many mistaken beliefs such as becoming homeless will improve their chances of securing Social Housing

·         Suggesting alternative solutions such as Mediation to solving problems earlier.

·         Ensuring that unreasonable behaviour towards Landlords and Neighbours will have consequences and is understood.

Better education needs to be provided at the earliest possible stage to genuinely assist all parties in solving their problems.

Thus far unhelpful advice has led to more misery and hardship and it remains to be seen if the relevant Housing services will step up to the plate as some have previously promised to address what are quickly becoming larger and more longer term problems.

References and Useful Links: 

·         Propertymark

·         Property Redress Mediation Service

 ·         Authored by VOLA Baord member

 ·         Draft Version: Awaiting approval by VOLA Board.