I had a discussion about this issue yesterday with someone who works for our local Law Centre and Citizens Advice Bureau and specialises in debt issues including repossession due to mortgage arrears. He confirmed a couple of things for me:littleFred wrote: Possession warrants are different. I can find no rules that say Tom is entitled to see any warrants of possession. See:
CPR 83.26
Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980
Courts Act 2003
Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007
Mortgage Repossessions (Protection of Tenants etc) Act 2010 s2
The Dwelling Houses (Execution of Possession Orders by Mortgagees) Regulations 2010
A warrant of possession is an instruction from the court to the enforcement officers. The validity of a possession warrant stands or falls according to the validity of the underlying possession order and notice of eviction. In that respect, it is quite different to a search warrant which is a standalone document and not reliant on previous court decisions.
1) Warrants of Possession are not signed by the judge since they are simply a confirmation that the Order of Possession can be enforced.
2) He had never heard of FMoTL etc so had not come across the claims about court seals etc. but in his experience seals are usually the "handstamp" variety without the date in the centre. He had no idea where our friends might have got their ideas about what a warrant should look like. In fact he can't think where the actual requirements might be specified because as he said it is effectively an internal court document.
3) Again in his experience,householders are not sent or shown the actual Warrant of Possession. They are sent a Notice of Eviction (N54) form. In his opinion someone who says that they have received a "warrant" (i.e. Tom) has almost certainly been sent this form and not the actual warrant.
http://www.johnnydebt.co.uk/wp-content/ ... ction1.jpg
4) He had never heard of Tom Crawford which I suggested he googled. I'll try to catch up with him again next week to see if he has any further opinions.
