Legal issues and court orders

Rent payments are a “priority debt”.  If you do not keep up the payments on your rent account you risk losing your home.  Other priority debts include council tax, court fines and utility costs such as for water, electricity and gas services.

We will ensure that you are kept informed about the balance of your account and the action we are taking. We will also give you advice and assistance on reducing your arrears. However, if you continue to make late, irregular, or no payments, we can take legal action which may result in you being evicted from your home.

In accordance with our eviction policy, we will seek possession for rent arrears only where all preventative methods, liaison with housing benefit departments, financial counselling, guidance and advice have failed to resolve the problem. We will not normally seek possession if you are maintaining an agreement to repay your arrears, unless there are other breaches of tenancy as well as rent arrears.

What is a notice seeking possession?


A notice seeking possession is a formal document served on tenants who owe at least four weeks' rent and service charges.  

Once this document has been served, if no agreement has been reached to reduce the arrears, or an agreement has been reached, but not maintained, we have the option of referring the case to court for a court order to secure payment of the arrears.  

What should I do if I receive a notice seeking possession?


You should contact your housing officer - income management, or a member of the income management team to discuss your financial situation.  Completion of an income/expenditure form is recommended so that we can check you are receiving all income you are entitled to and come to an agreement as to how much you can realistically afford to repay on top of the rent, and the regularity of the payments.  

If an agreement is reached and you make payments at the agreed amount and frequency, or you are able to repay the debt in full, no further action will be taken.  We will continue to monitor the account and the notice seeking possession will sit on your file for 12 months.   If your account goes in to arrears again within 12 months we can take legal action under this notice.

If your arrears balance increases and we receive no contact from you, or no payments despite agreements, we will apply for a court hearing.  This may happen anytime after the date specified on the notice.

What happens in court?


The court will write to you to tell you the date, time and place of the hearing.  We will also write to you to confirm the details and to come to an agreement if possible on the order to be requested in court.

There are a number of different decisions that the court can make:

Absolute Possession Order
•    This means that you have an agreed number of days, normally 28, to vacate the property.  If you do not vacate, we can apply to the court for a warrant to evict you.  However, if you are able to repay the arrears and legal costs in full, we may not enforce the order.

Suspended Possession Order
•    Possession of the property is suspended for as long as you pay the weekly rent and an agreed amount to reduce the arrears, until such time as the arrears and the legal costs are paid in full.  If you do not keep up with the order, we will advise you in writing of this fact, giving you seven days to contact us to discuss how you will catch up with the order.  If we have no contact within seven days we can apply for a warrant for your eviction.

Adjourn the Hearing
•    This means that an order is not made, but time is given to allow you to resolve the matter. You may be in a position to repay the debt within a fairly short period of time,  or the balance may be low, and the Judge believes that the making of an order is not necessary.

(Another order that was used until May 2009 was a Postponed Possession Order. You may be subject to one of these orders. If you had made an arrangement with us to reduce your arrears and the court thought that you would keep to these payments, then the possession order may be postponed.  This means that you have to pay your rent, plus an agreed amount, to reduce your arrears.  As long as you keep to this agreement, we will not evict you.  However, if you break the agreement, we will tell you what payment you need to make to bring the order up-to-date and you have seven days to make the payment or contact us to discuss your situation.)

The judge will only make an order if he feels it is reasonable to do so.  It is therefore important that you are at court to give your version of events.  If Magna have acted in an appropriate way and the arrangement to repay is based on a true account of your income and expenditure, we should be in agreement with you over the proposed action to be taken.  

When we apply for a court hearing we have to pay fees.  At the hearing the court will normally award the costs to Magna, which means that you must repay the fees to us once the arrears have been repaid.

What happens if my circumstances change and I can’t pay the order?


You must contact your housing officer, or a member of the income management team to discuss the situation.  You will be advised on the most appropriate course of action – which may be to return to court to ‘vary the order’.

If you take our advice we will aim to work with you to keep you in your home.

If you simply stop making the expected payments we will apply for a warrant for your eviction.

Eviction


If you do not pay the rent and arrears, as set out in the possession order, or contact us to discuss the situation, then we will tell you that we intend to apply to the court for a warrant to evict you.

You will be advised of the time and date of the eviction both by the court and by us.  You can apply to the court for the eviction to be suspended.  The court may suspend the eviction if you can show good reason for why you have been unable to maintain the terms of the order.  The warrant for eviction may be suspended for as long as you abide by the revised conditions.  

If the eviction is to go ahead, a bailiff and employees from Magna will attend the eviction.  We will notify your local Council’s homelessness section and, in some cases, Social Services about your eviction.  They may offer you advice and assistance.  If you are evicted because of rent arrears, your local Council may decide that you are intentionally homeless and that they have no duty to re-house you.

You should remove all your belongings from your property before the eviction.  Items left in the property will be stored for 28 days.  You may be charged for storage.   During this time arrangements can be made with us for collection.

It is important to remember that if you are evicted, you still have to pay back any money that you owe us.