Tenants are evicted for a variety of reasons; ideally, you don’t want to go down that route of having to have somebody forcibly removed from your property. When it is necessary, you want it to go as smoothly as possible so you can clean out the property and prepare it for the next tenant or tenants.
It can take three months for a County Court to enforce an eviction, so some landlords are pushing through to the High Court for a faster resolution. An increase in the instances of evictions bypassing the county courts and going straight to the High Court has led to a number of high-profile cases. In some instances, these evictions have failed because the landlord or other property owners failed to properly follow the legal process.
There are a specific set of legal compliances that you are expected to follow if you wish to get your present tenants evicted, and any failure on your part to do so, no matter how seemingly small to you, will result in massive legal fees and failure of the case. Plus, you will be stuck with tenants you no longer want to live in your property and you could even open yourself up to charges of harassment.
County Court Process
Before you get to the High Court, you will need to go through your County Court anyway. In the first instance, you will need to get a possession order through here before you will be permitted to apply to the High Court to get your tenants evicted. Then, you must apply back to the County Court to get proceedings transferred to the High Court under code Section 42(2) of the County Courts Act 1984.
Before an enforcement of eviction can be made, the High Court must issue a Writ for enforcement. No writ will be issued, and it may even be refused, if you do not post enough of a notice to the tenants that an eviction will be taking place.
Legal Complications
The issue becomes complicated when a property owner chooses to outsource the application to the High Court, and the execution of the eviction, to one of the new legal businesses that have entered into the eviction process in the last few years. We advise caution against using these businesses; often cold callers, for a small fee they will take the process off your hands and apply to the High Court for enforcement of the eviction.
The problem is that, as demonstrated in the high profile cases in 2015, that many of these businesses are following the wrong legal process. Writs are not required for people considered trespassers, but they are required for legal tenants. A writ will be issued, but many of those cases launches a successful defence as they were able to prove that the property owner had not given sufficient notice.