Portsmouth Combined Court
The stay has been lifted for private/social/local authority landlord possessions, it would be useful to know where your organisation is in terms of reactivating claims or issuing new ones.
If there is any indication you can provide of numbers you anticipate issuing/reactivating and when you plan to do so, that will help us to plan the resource we will need to find to manage this area of the business. As I am sure you can appreciate there are a lot of pulls from various jurisdictions for utilising court time and to enable us to prioritise what is needed where and when, it would be helpful to have an idea on work volumes we are expecting in. I appreciate this may not be an easy answer for you to provide of course.
If you are able to provide that information, thank you. In any event, going forward it will help us if you can give the court a heads up when you are going to clear any backlogs.
I can confirm that we are, through to the end of March, running our possession court lists from the Justice Centre in Havant every Wednesday and Friday. The Housing Advice Desk that is run by Swain & Co will also be in attendance at Havant to provide advice to Defendant’s who have review/substantive cases listed. Our current planning for cases is as follows:
• In November we have one possession court sitting every Wednesday and Friday
• From December to end of March we have two possession courts sitting every Wednesday and Friday (excluding 23/12, 30/12 and the Bank Holidays of course 25/12 and 1/1)
We have used Wednesday’s and Friday’s to list possession cases as those are the same days that were used for possession lists previously so hopefully that will have the least impact for your case workers.
The possession court lists will be reviewed depending on workload coming through of course. Each substantive case has been allowed a 30 minute time slot (max of 8 listed in one day at set intervals) to allow for social distancing in the courthouse. There is also a one way system in place with a separate entrance and exit to help the flow of people in the building. If you would like to have a copy of the Risk Assessment for Havant Justice Centre, please let me know.
I look forward to hearing from you in relation to the predicted workflow from your organisation coming back in to the court. In the meantime, if you have any queries, please let me know and I will try to assist.
Yvonne Moorecroft
Civil & Family Delivery Manager
Portsmouth Combined Court Centre|HMCTS|Winston Churchill Avenue|Portsmouth|Hants|PO1 2EB
Telephone: (023) 92893030 Mobile: 07971493154