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If it ain’t broke, don't fix it: ASA responds to Law Commission consultation on housing tribunals
ASA has responded to the Consultation Paper issued by the Law Commission entitled Housing: Proportionate Dispute Resolution – The Role of Tribunals, on which we commented in Issue 7 of Policy Bites.
It is not clear what the real problems are that the Commission is trying to resolve in making the changes proposed and therefore we are not convinced that the Commission has made a sufficient case to justify them. In relation to possession proceedings, there is no evidence that the existing system run by district judges in the County Court is seriously deficient. It is not clear that the system proposed would produce a higher degree of specialisation than is presently to be found among most district judges.
The paper makes a number of assumptions, among them that:
- possession proceedings in the tribunal would be handled more efficiently than they are presently in the County Court
- a housing tribunal would be perceived to be more "user-friendly" and less intimidating for tenants, and that they would be more likely to take part in the proceedings
The first assumption is far from self-evident. It is hard to imagine how such proceedings could be handled more quickly than they are at present. It is in fact a long-standing complaint that possession proceedings are handled too quickly in the County Court. The paper assumes that experienced district judges would transfer from the County Court to the tribunal in order to deal with housing cases, but it is not obvious that they would do so.
We are also unconvinced by the second assumption. Many tenants do not attend court hearings because they have come to an agreement with their (usually social) landlord. It seems to us that this is likely to continue to be the case under a tribunal system.
There does not seem to be a great deal of support for the Commission’s proposals. The paper notes that those who responded to the previous Issues Paper did not come out strongly in favour of any major change to current arrangements. Moreover, those responding to the Issues Paper, almost without exception, stated that they thought that further resources needed to be put into the housing dispute resolution system, either into the courts, or into the provision of advice and representation, or both.
We are not convinced that the Commission has made out a strong enough case for transferring housing cases to the tribunal, given in particular the fact that this is likely to result in the loss of legal aid for those cases (possession and disrepair cases) that will be dealt with in the "First-tier" of the tribunal.
The paper proposes that the tribunal should be able to make decisions on housing benefit claims and should be able to determine housing benefit appeals. Although these proposals are superficially attractive we feel that they are wrong in principle and would be difficult to implement in practice.
Read the full response.
Housing: Proportionate Dispute Resolution - the role of tribunals
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