Case Study 22

A landlord of a property let to 4 students on a Joint & Several Tenancy Agreement were in arrears several times during the tenancy. The tenancy allowed them to pay their share of the rent separately but nevertheless all were bound by the terms of the Tenancy Agreement. As there were 2 individual guarantors for two of the tenants, we wrote to them and one paid after a few e mails and the other was informed that we would be pursuing him unless the tenant makes an arrangement to settle his outstanding rent; as at today’s date, it would appear that legal proceedings will be issue against the guarantor.

However, as the tenants have vacated the property with no forwarding addresses, we will need to trace them and pursue them all under their obligation of the terms of the Agreement.

A referral from the accountancy department of a firm of Insolvency Practitioners resulted in me meeting with the referral, an Interior Designer who was owed a substantial sum of money by her client.

After several letters, the approximately half of the debt was paid, but the debtor refused to pay the final sum due under the terms of the Contract with our client. This is now the subject of a court action and hopefully the court mediation service will be able to arbitrate, if both parties agree, and show the debtor where he is wrong. Legal proceedings were issued in January 2015 and this is another case delayed due to the problems with the Court. Please see next article.

The pressures and shortage of staff causes problems for claimants and defendants

Several clients are experiencing big problems with courts due to the increase in sums that can be claimed in the Small Claims Court; this is affecting all cases that come before a District Judge in a County Court and a relatively small claim, if defended, can last several months and possibly over a year, but I want to explain one case in which we are involved in advising a client who instructs us on occasions and to date a total of £5,500 has been recovered since we first met him.

Having instructed us to issue proceedings for the recovery of a debt, our client decided that having spent a sum on fees and costs in bringing the action and the debtor entering a spurious defence decided that the time that he would need to attend court would not be possible as he was very busy and could not spare the time; consequently he did not attend the Hearing and the defendant was awarded £50 in expenses.

Now this is one of the problems that claimants and defendants are incurring.

The District Judge in the case made an Order on 24 August 2015 for the Claimant to pay the Defendant £50 by 4 p.m. on 7^th September 2015. The Order was typed up and sent to us on 5 September and we received it on 7^th September. This type of problem occurs regularly,