This chapter concerns discretionary grounds for a claim to possession of property brought by either a mortgage lender or landlord (mandatory possession proceedings are considered in Chapter 16 below). Although the principles and procedures are different, the reasons for arrears arising in the first place are often not dissimilar between tenures (relationship breakdown, loss of employment by one or both partners, and, at a general level, inability to meet financial commitments), although certain prominent reasons are tenure specific (HB issues for rented accommodation, risky lending practices with ownership). While much high-profile government policy energy is given over to ‘saving’ owners in arrears during times of crisis, one hears much less about policy initiatives to assist tenants in arrears, which tend to be left to good practice-type initiatives at the level of individual landlord. When it comes to possession, however, the regulatory rhetoric is exactly the same across tenures: possession should be the last resort. It is the interpretation of that phrase ‘last resort’, however, which is variable. That is the socio-legal question, viz. at what point does the lender/landlord reach the ‘last resort’?

The first section focuses on mortgage arrears and the second on tenant arrears. In that latter section, however, the predominant focus is on social housing, for two reasons. First, quite simply, there is more that is known about social-rented evictions – indeed, very little is known about private-rented evictions on discretionary grounds for arrears; and second, there is an important social scientific question about the changing construction of the ‘social’ in relation to social housing here (again).