Renters left at mercy of brutal ‘no-fault’ eviction policy

‘I remember only too well the fear, the depression and the panic of living in that situation, and what it does to children watching their distraught parent,’ says one reader who was made homeless. Photograph: Antonio Guillem Fernández/Alamy

Polly Toynbee’s excellent exposé of county court eviction proceedings implicates larger issues around the role of these courts in assembly-line debt enforcement (I spent a day in a court where ‘no-fault’ evictions reach 10 an hour. Whose fault is this, Rishi Sunak?, 15 December). Historically, this is not a new phenomenon: in 1910, county court debt cases in West Hartlepool were dispensed with at the rate of one every 85 seconds. But debt enforcement in these courts is now part of an international “overindebtedness industry” that includes debt buyers (firms that buy debts at pennies in the pound and claim for the full debt amount), debt technology platforms and specialist law firms.

Data I got from the Ministry of Justice on county court customers making multiple civil money claims indicates that 10 legal firms represent 80% of these claims, the great majority of which are undefended debt claims resulting in default judgments. Moreover, a number of these law firms are integrated with credit management and international debt buyers, often owned by private equity firms.