4th
Dec 2015
County courts are continually being overrun by possession claims and the situation is ever worsening according to a firm of eviction specialists. This is despite the problem being reported on over twelve months ago.
The government attempted to resolve the situation by introducing call centres, however the firm is unimpressed as they are being run by staff, mostly temps, who do not have the necessary experience because of the lack of proper training.
The head of legal for the firm, Julie Herbert, recently contacted the centre to find out what was happening with one of her cases. The operator told her that the centre was staffed by six personnel, who were having to deal with enquiries and associated paperwork for more than 50 different courts.
Herbert said: “It’s evident that those at the call centre are not qualified to be able to differentiate between correspondence that can sit on a file, and correspondence that needs the urgent attention of a judge in order for a case to progress. We have had numerous incidents where court staff appear to be opening post, filing it and doing little about it, adding to the problem even further.”
The firm is extremely concerned that with more courts due to be closed down and with the new Deregulation Bill in force, that this will cause unmitigated backlogs for the more involved cases, and of course delays at an unprecedented high.
Julie Herbert warns: “When correspondence is received by the court, it needs to be looked at by someone who is capable of deciding whether the item of correspondence requires any action. If they are going to close courts, they need to transfer some of those qualified members of staff to these call centres. Alternatively, train up more qualified staff so that they have a legal understanding of each item of correspondence which the court receives. It can then be processed saving numerous calls from practitioners chasing them up.”
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