
Two weeks ago I posted about problems I had been having with Central London County Court not issuing an appeal against a Possession Order or dealing with an urgent application to stay enforcement of that Order pending the outcome of the appeal. The day after I posted that I received a letter from the Court dated 30 May informing me that my appeal papers which I had sent on by email on 2 May had been received and referred to a Judge. The letter did not say anything about my application to stay enforcement.
I have also been able to speak to somebody Court. As the system showed that it was my third call and that nobody had called back the outside caller centre was able to put me through to somebody at the Court. She told me that there was nothing that could be done about my urgent application from a month earlier. This was because the papers had been referred to a Judge. I asked if somebody could not go to the Judge's office and see if this case could be moved closer to the top of the pile of cases waiting to be dealt with by the Judge. I was told that this would not be possible there were many Judges to whom papers were sent and the Court did not keep a record of which Judge a particular case was referred to. This meant that until the Judge returned the papers there was nothing that Court staff could do to progress the case.
I have made a formal complaint to the Court about the way in which this case has been dealt with and about the failure to the Court to reply to emails or phone messages. I have submitted the complaint via the Resolver service with the Court Service use. I am not very impressed with this service so far. I have provided details of my complaint and indicated how I am feeling using emoji's as requested but so far the problem is unresolved.
Meanwhile I have obtained an amendment to the Legal Funding Certificate so that I can spend a large amount of (what should be) unnecessary tax payer's money on an application to the High Court to stay enforcement there because Central London County Court have been unable to deal with the application which I made to them 6 weeks ago. In the absence of an Order from Central London County Court staying enforcement the landlord has transferred the case to the High Court for fast enforcement.
The problems with this case do not appear to be an isolated glitch amidst an otherwise efficient service. I sent another appeal to the Court on 17 May. I have heard nothing back yet despite sending an email asking for an update on 7 June.
I would be grateful if anyone else experiencing service failure type problems with the County Courts would send me the details so that I can post them on here. You can leave a comment or email at wflack63@gmail.com. I will keep the cases anonymous to maintain client confidentiality. I think that it would to have as many accounts of these difficulties in one place as possible n case people in case anyone ever needs persuading of the extent of the problem and the need for urgent remedial action.