County court judge says he cannot give Southern Housing permission to force entry for gas check

Landlords cannot force entry to conduct safety tests even after a tenant fails to comply with an injunction, a county court judge has ruled.

Southern Housing had asked Bromley County Court for permission to force entry to a flat in a large block in East Dulwich.

The 80,000-home housing association, which needed to carry out a gas safety inspection, had already received an injunction earlier this year requiring the tenant to provide entry, after alleging it had “contacted the defendant many times seeking access, but the defendant had failed to provide it”.

However, District Judge Cridge has now handed down a decision which concluded that he does not have the power to give the landlord permission for forced entry.

In its case to the court, summarised in Cridge’s judgement, Southern Housing had argued that “any judge of the County Court has power to make an order permitting the claimant to force entry into the defendant’s flat”, relying on a decision made in July 2024 in a case involving Sovereign Housing Association.

It pointed to the risks to the defendant inherent in gas appliances going unchecked and suggested that permitting forced entry was a more proportionate method of enforcing the injunction than committing the defendant to prison, for contempt of court in repsect of the injunction, or seeking possession of his home.

But the judge dismissed the claim, with his conclusion emphasising that the sanctity of the home was “deeply embedded in our law” and that CIvil Procedure Rules cannot be used to circumvent that principle.

“No judge has power to make an order permitting a landlord to force entry into their tenant’s home by way of enforcing an express or implied contractual right of access,” he said.

Cridge said the claimant’s “current remedies remain those already available: contempt or possession proceedings”. While he recognised that these remedies were “slow and expensive” and that it was “perhaps understandable” that landlords might seek the shortcut of forced entry, this was nonetheless not a legally available route.

“Whilst this outcome might appear harsh or impractical, it seems to me that reform of the law on this question is a matter for Parliament, not the courts,” he added.

The judge noted that he and his colleagues in Bromley dealt with an average of 15 to 20 access injunction applications each month and that the monthly figures nationally “must run into the high hundreds”.

He said he was “aware that some judges do make orders permitting forced entry” and added that “given the large number of these cases before the County Court and the difference in judicial approach, it may be desirable for a more senior court to provide authoritative guidance”.

Cridge also emphasised to the defendant, Mr James Emmanuel, that the original injunction still stood and that he was required to provide access to the landlord or face proceedings to imprison him for contempt of court or evict him.