‘People are struggling’: eviction cases mount in northern England and Wales
I t is a February morning at Doncaster county court and a retired man is being led out of a courtroom wiping his eyes with a handkerchief. He has sobbed his way through much of a near 15-minute hearing, telling a district judge how his efforts at cardiopulmonary resuscitation failed to save the life of his ageing mother just four weeks earlier.
That personal tragedy compounded efforts to solve mounting financial problems that had worsened since his retirement – including more than £60,000 in mortgage and interest arrears on his £300,000 home, for which Leeds building society is pursuing him.
The judge displayed some sympathy – ruling that the lender’s “interest can be protected in this case” before adjourning for 28 days to allow the defendant to raise about £48,000 via a bridging loan guaranteed against his share of his late mother’s £250,000 estate. The man – who was once a solicitor – thanks the judge and leaves, looking totally broken.
Scenes like these are unfolding in debt courts up and down the country. Here, in the heart of the cost of living crisis, the volume of cases is rising day by day.
“These cases are picking up. It is so sad,” one district judge, who did not want to be named, tells the Guardian. “People’s finances are dire. How anyone survives in this day and age – it makes me want to cry. What we wrestle with as judges, it’s difficult.”
This week, the Guardian visitedcourtroomsin Blackpool, Doncaster and Caernarfon in north Wales, and found anecdotal evidence of a surge in cases in all three places.
Each micro-story is adding up to a significant macro-issue.
The homeless charity Shelter warned at the end of last year that one in 12 private renters in England – equivalent to 941,000 people – are under threat of
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