Tenants - the sheriffs are coming!
by David Carter on 22 February 2012
As a tenant, you have to really work quite hard to get the sheriffs to come round!
High Court Enforcement Officers, as sheriffs are now called, enforce unpaid county court judgments (CCJ) and High Court judgments and orders on behalf of landlords against tenants.
So what do you have to do to get the sheriffs to come round?
- Firstly, choose not to pay the rent (residential or commercial) you owe to your landlord
- Then ignore their letters and phone calls
- When summonsed to court, ignore the summons, so judgment is awarded by default
- Or perhaps you decided to contest, but judgment was still awarded
- Your landlord may also have applied for a possession order to evict you at the same time
But all is not lost!
Although you are being charged interest on the unpaid rent on a daily basis, you still have 14 days to pay from the date of judgment (unless the court has stipulated otherwise) and the CCJ will be cleared and won’t be registered against your name.
However, if you still really want the sheriffs to come round, you need to completely ignore the CCJ and possession order and hope it will all go away.
During this time, your landlord will have instructed the HCEO, formerly known as the sheriff, to enforce the judgment and recover from you the full amount of rent he is owed, plus interest, court fees and all the enforcement costs. To save time and cost, he can even apply for a combined writ for the rent arrears and repossession.
Now, at last, your wish will come true and you will get a visit from the sheriff, as he attends to seize your goods, which will be sold at auction to recover the rent arrears, unless you finally pay in full, and possibly repossess your rented accommodation or offices at the same time.
Sheriffs are the last port of call for many landlords in their attempts to recover the money they are owed from tenants who won’t pay. A visit from the sheriff is easy to avoid – you will have plenty of opportunities to pay before it reaches that stage – and it will cost you less in the long run.
© Sheriffs High Court Enforcement Ltd. Please contact us to request permission to reproduce this article.
Disclaimer: The statements and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Sheriffs High Court Enforcement Ltd, trading as The Sheriffs Office. Sheriffs High Court Enforcement Ltd does not take any responsibility for the views of the author. The author will not be held responsible for any comments posted by visitors to this site. Please note that this article does not constitute legal advice. The author has used his best endeavours to make this article as accurate and complete as possible, but requests that the reader be aware that the law of England and Wales frequently changes. The author strongly advises the reader to take legal advice before embarking on any enforcement action.
