Courts reopen for possessions 

The position of Landlords (and residential Landlords in particular) throughout the pandemic has not been an enviable one.  The steps taken to protect residential tenants from homelessness, though doing their job, come at a price to landlords who aren’t always the large organisations or vast, wealthy property owners they can be painted as.  Many ordinary people, reliant on that rental income to meet their own mortgages have been left in the lurch by the sweeping changes of the Coronavirus Act.    

The position is constantly changing, but fortunately landlords have finally been given a small lifeline in that possession proceedings have now recommenced on the 21^st September 2020.

Though a lifeline has been given, the position is not easy or simple.  The courts have been provided with guidance on the priority listing of such applications with ‘normal’ possessions or those with only limited rent arrears (less than 12 months or 9 months if the payments amount to more than 25% of a landlords total income) falling to the back of the queue. 

For any existing possession proceedings, that have been issued but not yet dealt with by the courts, a reactivation notice must be filed with the court in order to even join that queue which we expect to be a long one given that all proceedings have been stayed since 27^th March 2020.

The legal position has barely stood still throughout 2020 with the relevant legislation, Court position and notice periods all having changed repeatedly since the implementation of the Coronavirus Act.  Notice periods are now largely six months, but correct notices given previously may still be valid and even current notice periods do vary depending upon the date of and reason for the notice. See Rosie Woodward’s article for further details here.

If you have found the changes somewhat of a minefield, we can help you navigate with fixed charges in most cases as detailed below.