About Part 4
Part 4 is for those of you who do not want to evict your tenant, but are thinking of claiming the outstanding rent by getting a County Court Judgement (CCJ). Or if you are using section 21.
CCJs for section 21 situations
One situation where you may want to get a separate CCJ is if you are using section 21 and the ‘accelerated procedure’ to obtain possession – as you can only use this procedure for possession – not for any money claims..
Note by the way that if you are using the accelerated procedure to get your possession order, it is quite all right to have a separate claim running at the same time for a CCJ for rent arrears. However if you do this you will only be able to claim for rent that has already fallen due, not for future rent. So you will either need to bring a series of seprate claims, or bring a claim after the tenant has vacated, when the sum due from the tenant will have ‘crystalised’.
However, you won’t always want to get a possession order. Sometimes it will be inappropriate.
When possession proceedings will be inappropriate:
- Where the rent is being paid by Housing Benefit:
- but the tenant has failed to pay off arrears which accrued before payments started or
- where the benefit does not cover the whole of the rent and the tenant is failing to pay the extra
- Where the tenant is keeping the rent arrears to under two months worth to prevent you using ground 8 (see stage 2), and of course
- When the tenant has already left the property!
In all of these circumstances you need to consider whether you should obtain a separate claim for a CCJ. But is it really worth the effort? See the next section …