Misery TV

I seem to recall that, a few years ago, an incoming head of Channel Five promised that the channel was going to cut down on those 'reality' programmes which are based upon the viewer being able to wallow in someone else's misery.  Yet still there seems to be a stream of such shows.  You know what I mean - Can't Pay? We'll Take it Away, (people in debt being harassed by private bailiffs),  Nightmare Neighbour Next Door, (self-explanatory tales of being harassed by their neighbours), Fare Dodgers, (again, self explanatory), Benefits Britain: Life on the Dole, (let's laugh at poor people) and Nightmare Tenants, Slum Landlords (a curious combination of revelling in people being evicted and poor people, usually immigrants, being ripped off by unscrupulous landlords).  While the last of these might appear to be trying for some balance in its depiction of tenants and landlords, I noticed recently that another such programme had appeared in Five's schedules - Extreme Nightmare Tenants - which, it turned out, was actually a re-editing of the former show, focusing entirely upon the 'bad' tenants. making clear where the audience interest lies.  Now, I know that the main reason Channel Five are coming up with such 'cut and shut' shows is that, because of the pandemic, no new production has been possible, (residential repossessions of all kinds were suspended for seven months), but it is clear what they believe audience expectations to be.  People being kicked out of houses is clearly a bigger ratings winner than looking at the plight of those at the mercy of bad landlords and their shitty properties.   

I have to declare an interest in these programmes about repossessions, as, until I took my 'career break' (as if it is actually a 'career'),  I was involved in civil Enforcement and a large part of the job involved repossessions.  Consequently, I know that things like Nightmare Tenants, Slum Landlords are highly unrepresentative of the majority of repossession cases.  Private tenants of the sort shown in the programme are actually quite rare.  The reality is that the majority of people evicted for rent arrears or anti-social behaviour are, in fact, tenants of housing associations or charities.  Usually people with all manner of problems, often related to substance abuse and mental health issues, or just plain old extreme poverty.  While I understand that the agencies involved can't have their properties occupied rent free, severly damaged or allow their other tenants to be harassed, I can't help but feel that putting these people out on the street without any support is a particularly constructive approach to the problem.  Sure, a proportion of the people I've been involved in evicting are scumbags, the majority are, themselves, victims.  

As for the way evictions are portrayed, both in Nightmare Tenants and Can't Pay? We'll Take it Away, well, they are highly misleading.  For one thing, despite the bullshit they try to spin on screen, the majority of residential evictions aren't carried out by Sheriff's Officers (who, these days, are private bailiffs working under contract ).  They are carried out by County Court Bailiffs who are civil servants.  The former only got a real toehold in residential evictions when they started telling landlords that they could evict without notice.  Which is unlawful - the Court of Appeal established many years ago that reasonable notice must be given to the tenant.  The County Courts has always taken this to mean at least seven days.  In reality, due to workloads, it is usually more like three weeks from the issue of a warrant.  Nowadays, the Sheriff's also have to obey this rule (which they should have been doing all along.  In fact, much of what you see the Sheriff's doing in those TV programmes is bullshit: they have no right of entry to private premises, property owned by a sole trader which is deemed to be 'tools of the trade' is exempt from levy and/or seizure.  There's more, but I can't be bothered to list it.  Despite what they try to imply, they actually have fewer powers than County Court Bailiffs (no power of arrest, for instance, as they are only agents of the court, not officers of the court).  Anyway, getting back to the way evictions are portrayed in Nightmare Neighbours, well, the level of confrontation is much less in reality and I'm puzzled by the presence of those two-fisted solicitors who always seem to take credit for a successful eviction.  Only once, in twenty years, can I think of an instance when a lawter actually attended an eviction...