Only 22 landlord and tenant disputes were referred to a government mediation pilot that ran for several months - and only four were resolved successfully - a post-implementation review has revealed.

The rental mediation pilot was introduced in February 2021 as part of the court process for housing possession cases and was designed to sustain tenancies and reduce pressure on the courts. It ran until October that year.

The government estimated that up to 10,000 cases would be suitable for mediation in the first six months of 2021 and that 3,000 of these would be successfully resolved. However, according to the review, published this week, only 22 cases were referred for mediation. Of these, nine were mediated. Four were classified as successful.

The review suggests a ‘multitude’ of structural, behavioural, process and contextual factors contributed to the low uptake.

Opinions were divided on where mediation should be situated within the possession process.

One duty adviser said: ‘If mediation has been preferred as a solution to reduce demand for courts, for judicial time, for all of that, why do we wait until the point at which they’re already involved in the court process? Why doesn’t it appear at a much earlier point?’

Some respondents suggested mediation should be prescribed for private landlords before a possession notice has been issued, as is the case for social landlords. Others thought mediation was best placed later in the court process, though some pointed out that goodwill declines later down the line.

Practitioners were concerned about the risk of tenants entering into inappropriate agreements at the mediation, not having received legal advice on whether it was the most beneficial option available to them.

The review also identified various communication barriers. For instance, tenants were not always informed if their landlord had declined to attend mediation.

One tenant said: ‘So, we were thinking, okay, [mediation] sounds good. Sounds like a lifeline, especially when you're going through it…we thought it sounded great. We didn't hear anything back. The next thing we heard was three months later that we had a hearing and we had thought that we would have this mediation in the middle and so [it was] big for us.’

Duty advisers sometimes struggled to get information on how the mediation service worked.

The reintroduction of Covid restrictions in January 2021 also affected the pilot outcome. As well as lower-than-anticipated numbers of cases coming to court, courts were considering only the most serious cases, such as those involving anti-social behaviour or significant rent arrears, which duty advisers deemed unsuitable for mediation.

Revised arrangements were introduced for possession cases following a Covid-related stay on proceedings. Cases were being listed by the court for review prior to a substantive hearing. At the review stage, tenants could access free legal advice from duty solicitors. Under the pilot, if agreement was not reached at the review stage, the case was deemed suitable for mediation, and both landlord and tenant agreed to mediation, the case could be referred for mediation.

 

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