HM Courts and Tribunals Service

4. Mrs A complains about HMCTS and a County Court’s handling of her ‘Accelerated Possession Order’ against tenants living in her property.

5. She complains it took too long to process her possession claim. She believes the cause of this was: • Its mishandling of claim paperwork. It returned her claim to her after failing to give to her a deadline to pay the court fee.

• It did not provide her with instructions regarding how to complete a court order form, nor did it tell her when they resent it to her.

6. As a result, Mrs A believes it was too slow to process her claim, which prevented her from recovering her money from the tenants. Because of this she has experienced significant financial loss.

7. She also complains about HMCTS’ communication. She says it: • did not provide her with any updates, or information, about her case when she requested this via email and over the phone.

• ignored the correspondence she sent.

• Was very rude and dismissive of them throughout the process.

• Her possession claim was unsuccessful, and she did not get the outcome she wanted. She complains that HMCTS: • failed to enforce the possession claim after the tenants left the property.

• promised to refund her the court fee, but it never processed this and later changed its mind.

8. Finally, she complains about the way HMCTS handled her complaint. She says it: • Failed to address all her complaint, • Failed to introduce reasonable adjustments, • Answered defensively and robotically, • Omitted key facts and evidence, • Took too long to respond and responded outside of its ten-day time frame, and, • Allowed a biased complaint handler to handle her complaint despite her request for another staff member to consider her complaint.

9. The whole experience has taken its toll on both her physical and mental health. It has also taken up a lot of her time and disrupted her work, as Mrs A had to complete a lot of repetitive administrative tasks to progress her case which were unnecessary.

10. As an outcome of her complaint, she would like HMCTS to: • Acknowledge its errors • Apologise • Financial redress for the court fees • Compensation over £12,500 (level 6) for the impact • Service improvements

11. In April 2025, Mrs A applied for a possession order to remove tenants from a property she owned.

12. Mrs A says she spoke to HMCTS soon after applying. She says HMCTS told her it could not process the application because she had not paid the fee, but that it would keep the application and give her time to pay. A few days later, HMCTS returned the application because the fee had not been paid.

13. In May 2025, Mrs A made a new application and paid the fee. HMCTS sent her a notice of issue, which confirmed her application had been registered. The notice included a tear-off section with two options. Mrs A could either continue with the possession claim and claim costs or tell the court the tenants had left and ask only for costs.

14. Mrs A returned the tear-off section, but HMCTS did not consider it completed correctly, so returned the form and explained how she should correct it. HMCTS’ records show it received the corrected form on 30 July 2025. The records show Mrs A had chosen the second option: the tenants had left and she was asking for her costs to be repaid.

15. HMCTS’ records show it sent the application to a judge. On 20 August 2025, the judge granted the possession order. The judge’s decision did not mention the costs Mrs A had asked for.

16. After receiving the judgment, Mrs A contacted HMCTS to ask why costs had not been awarded. She said she had already told HMCTS the tenants had left and gave details of where they had moved. She also said she wanted the tenants to pay for property damage, rent arrears and court fees. HMCTS said those issues were not covered by her original application and that she would need to make a separate application to recover that money.

17. Mrs A then complained to HMCTS. She said it had taken too long to process her possession application and had not dealt with her outstanding costs.

18. HMCTS did not uphold the complaint. It accepted the application took longer than Mrs A wanted, partly because it had to return the form to her. It also accepted the form was not clear and said it would raise this with the relevant department. HMCTS said it was dealing with a high number of possession applications at the time. It again told Mrs A she would need to make a new application if she wanted to recover money from her former tenants

21. To put this complaint and our decision in context, it is helpful to explain HMCTS’ role and how we consider complaints about it.

22. HMCTS staff carry out two types of work: • judicial work — actions and decisions made by, or on behalf of, a judge • administrative work — actions and decisions about HMCTS’ day-to-day operations.

23. By law, under the Parliamentary Commissioner Act 1967, we can only consider complaints about HMCTS’ administrative work.

24. In this case, decisions about possession applications were for a judge to make.

Deadline for payment

25. The evidence we have seen shows that a possession order application form makes clear that a fee is payable. HMCTS’ website also gives guidance about this, and the form signposts people to that guidance. We consider it should have been clear that Mrs A needed to pay the fee when she applied. Because she did not pay it, HMCTS returned the application. We cannot say HMCTS was wrong to do that.

26. We note Mrs A says HMCTS told her by phone it would give her more time to pay. We do not dispute what she has told us. However, HMCTS no longer has the call recording, in line with its data retention policy, so we do not have enough evidence to make a clear finding about what was said.

27. Even if HMCTS did not give Mrs A a deadline, we would be unlikely to take this issue further. The guidance said the fee had to be paid upfront. Without payment, the application was always at risk of being returned. Even if HMCTS had agreed to allow more time, Mrs A still needed to pay the fee as soon as possible. Given that payment was already overdue, she did not need a deadline for this.

Instructions on how to complete the ‘Notice of issue’ tear off section.

28. We understand why Mrs A found the notice of issue slip confusing. The form gave two options, but it did not clearly explain how she should show which option she wanted to choose. For example, there was no box to tick and no instruction to delete the option that did not apply. It is easy to see why she did not complete the form in the way HMCTS expected.

29. Our Principles of Good Administration say organisations should be customer focused and make sure people understand what they need to do. HMCTS did not meet that expectation here because the form was unclear.

30. However, we do not consider this had a significant impact on Mrs A. When HMCTS returned the form, it explained how she should complete it. We have also seen evidence that, when she sent it back, HMCTS expedited the application so it could go before a judge more quickly. HMCTS also recognised the concern may point to a wider problem and took steps to raise it internally. We would not have expected HMCTS to do more.

Updates on the progress of her application

31. The evidence we have seen does not support this part of Mrs A’s complaint. HMCTS’ records show that, between May and August 2025, Mrs A asked HMCTS for updates several times. The records show HMCTS responded each time, mostly within a few days. Its replies covered all the issues she had raised and outlined the status of her case. It also provided advice on completing forms and responded to her complaints. Our Principles of Good Administration say organisations should deal with people promptly. We are satisfied HMCTS did so here.

Court fee refund

32. We should explain that the court fee is designed to cover the administrative costs of processing an application. It is not related to, or dependant on, the success of the application itself. The evidence shows that HMCTS did process Mrs A’s application so we would not usually have expected that fee to be returned to her.

33. Having said this, we noted Mrs A’s contention that, during a phone call on 14 August 2025, HMCTS promised a refund because of poor service and ignored correspondence. Under our Principles of Good Administration – being customer focussed – we expect organisations to do what they say are going to do. If they make a commitment to do something, they should keep to it or explain why they cannot. We have looked at Mrs A’s complaint in this context.

34. This appears to stem from a misunderstanding. HMCTS’ review of the telephone call showed that, although the call-handler had advised Mrs A she needed to contact the relevant court if she believed she was entitled to a refund, they made no guarantee that a refund request would be successful. This view of events is supported by Mrs A who acknowledged during our work that HMCTS had not clearly promised a refund but had raised her expectations.

35. We do not doubt that, for whatever reason, Mrs A came away from the telephone call believing her court fee would be refunded to her. However, we cannot say this was a result of an error by HMCTS. In any event, the evidence shows that HMCTS later explained clearly why it would not refund the court fee and apologised if this had not been clearly explained during the initial call. We would not have expected it to do more.

Mrs A’s claim for costs

36. It seems clear from the evidence we have seen that Mrs A wanted to recover her costs and had indicated as much when she returned the tear-off slip. We can therefore understand that this appeared to have been overlooked when her application for possession was considered.

37. However, as we have explained earlier this was a decision for a judge, not HMCTS. HMCTS’ role in this was to put the application before a judge and the evidence we have seen shows this happened. It had no control over the judge’s decision and neither we, nor HMCTS, have the power to challenge.

38. The evidence also shows that the court order issued following the judgement explained how either party could challenge the decision if they disagreed with it. If Mrs A believes the judge overlooked this part of her application, she would need to seek independent legal advice about how she may challenge the decision.

39. There also appears to have been confusion about what “costs” meant. In a possession order application, costs usually mean the cost of bringing the matter to court, such as the application fee. However, Mrs A had clearly indicated during her complaint to HMCTS that she was also seeking money for property damage and unpaid rent. HMCTS correctly explained that those were separate issues and that she would need to make a separate application to recover that money.

40. It would have been helpful if HMCTS had clearly told Mrs A she could still challenge the judge’s apparent decision not to award court costs. However, because the court order itself explained how to challenge the decision, we do not consider this omission significant enough to be maladministration.

Rudeness of staff

41. We are sorry Mrs A felt HMCTS staff were rude and dismissive. We have not seen evidence that staff behaved in that way, but we understand this was her experience of the contact. HMCTS invited Mrs A to provide the names of any staff members she felt had been rude, so it could look into this. That was an appropriate and proactive response. Based on the evidence available, we cannot say HMCTS staff acted inappropriately.

Complaint handling

42. Having looked carefully at HMCTS’ complaint handling, we have seen no evidence of maladministration here. The evidence shows that it addressed the concerns Mrs A raised and did so in an open and accountable manner. It clearly explained its processes and how they applied in Mrs A’s case, for example why it would not be refunding her court fees. We would not have expected it to do more.

43. We have noted Mrs A’s contention that HMCTS failed to make reasonable adjustments to help her complain. However, we have seen no evidence that she asked HMCTS to make such adjustments or let it know what adjustments she needed. Nor have we seen evidence that she let HMCTS know she was struggling to make a complaint. Because of this, we have seen no indications of maladministration here.

44. We have also noted Mrs A’s contention that the complaint handler was biased and that HMCTS refused her request for the case to be allocated to someone else. We should explain that we are not a regulator and have no say in the day-to-day running of HMCTS. Although we can look, in general, at HMCTS’ handling of a complaint, we cannot dictate which individual member of staff should be responsible for looking at it. That is a matter for HMCTS’ discretion.

45. Having looked carefully at the HMCTS’ complaint handling, we have seen no evidence of bias so will be taking no further action on this point.

Delay in complaint response

46. HMCTS’ guidance, ‘Complaints procedure’, says there are three stages to its complaint responses. Although it provides timescales for how long each stage should typically take, it says it may take longer in some cases, particularly at busy times or if the complaint is complicated.

47. Although, under our Principles of Good Administration – being customer focussed – we expect organisations to deal with people within published time limits, we recognise this may not always be possible. The overriding issue for us is that matters are dealt with promptly and without undue delay. In cases where time-limits are exceeded, we would usually expect the organisation to recognise, and apologise for, this.

48. The evidence we have seen shows that Mrs A first complained to HMCTS on 12 August and it issued a final response (after completing the complaint stages) on 21 October. We cannot say this was an unreasonable time frame and we can see that HMCTS apologised for any delay. We would not have expected it to do more.

1. We are sorry to hear about the difficulty Mrs A had with her tenants, and we can appreciate why she urgently wanted them to leave her property. We are grateful for the information she has provided to us to explain her complaint.

2. Having looked at Mrs A’s case, we have decided not to consider it further. Whilst we recognise that HMCTS could have been clearer in some of its communication with Mrs A, we have seen nothing to suggest these issues were serious enough to amount to maladministration. In any event, we are satisfied that HMCTS has apologised for any inconvenience that may have been caused. With regards to the other issues Mrs A raised about HMCTS’ handling and progression of her possession order application, we have found no indications it did anything wrong.

3. We appreciate why this complaint is important to Mrs A and we will explain our decision in more detail below. We hope our explanation provides her with reassurance about how carefully we have considered her complaint before reaching our decision.