Tenancy Mediation

Facilitating agreements between tenants and landlords

Disputes between landlords and tenants are common, and often end up with legal action.

Tenancy mediation is a straightforward way of resolving disputes between landlords and tenants. It provides the perfect setting for a constructive and facilitated discussion, providing an opportunity for all parties involved to communicate more positively. This can help them to understand one another’s concerns and to jointly come up with ideas for how to end their ongoing dispute.

Tenancy mediation is used to address:

Rent arrears
Maintenance and repair issues
Disagreements over responsibilities
Security deposit issues

And benefits include:

The tenant-landlord relationship is preserved and improved
Costly and time-consuming formal action is avoided
Tenancy can be retained
The landlord conforms to legislation and best practice

How does it work?

1. Referring a case

A completed referral form, providing us with details of the dispute and of the parties, and a signed booking form all are that is needed to book in the case.

2. Before the mediation

The case manager will liaise with the referrer to organise the logistics, including timings, contact information, and online links (if required).

3. Individual meetings

The mediator will meet with each party individually to discuss the dispute to date. These private sessions will last for approximately 1½ hours each.

4. Joint meeting

Getting parties together for half a day allows for a comprehensive airing of views, as well as a discussion with a view to building an agreement.

5. The agreement

The agreement is a joint plan of action decided upon by the participants. The mediator can write it up as a good faith agreement to give to both parties.

6. Feeding back

If there is a third-party referrer, UK Mediation will provide them with a Mediation Summary on the next working day (subject to parties’ consent).

7. Follow-up

The case manager will follow up the situation after an agreed period by contacting the parties confidentially to see if the agreement is working.

Tenancy mediation FAQs

We understand that you may have some queries about how tenancy mediation works.

We’ve answered some of the most Frequently Asked Questions below.

What sorts of disputes can tenancy mediation be used for?

Mediation can be effective at resolving all manner of tenancy-related disputes, including rent arrears, property repairs, communication issues, and upkeep of communal areas.

It can help to re-open communication, promote honest and open dialogue, and help landlords and tenants to see each others' points of view. The mediator is not there to review evidence, nor to make a legally-binding decision on who is right or wrong.

Does tenancy mediation work?

Simply put, yes.

We have been resolving tenancy disputes for over 23 years now, both privately between tenants and landlords, or in partnership with housing associations/local authorities.

The vast majority of cases end with some sort of future-focused agreement being written up, and the feedback we receive from parties speaks for itself.

Can tenancy mediation be used before going to court?

Tenancy mediation is highly recommended BEFORE going through legal proceedings.

It is a much cheaper and faster method of resolving your dispute and offers more control over any agreements made.

Can tenancy mediation be done online?

Successful mediation cases can indeed be delivered online. Even now that lockdowns have been lifted, we continue to deliver a small percentage of our mediation cases online. Feedback has been excellent and we continue to see superb results for the parties.

However, if given the choice between the two (online or face-to-face), we would still recommend having the mediation face-to-face. We find that that the physical human element can be extremely valuable and getting people together in a room often yields the most benefits.

Can tenancy mediation be done over the phone too?

Yes - for tenancy disputes with only one or two simple issues, we can offer a two-hour telephone mediation process. Here, the mediator shuttles between phone calls with the parties, passing across offers, messages, options, and requests. A more complex case may require more than just telephone mediation, however.

Please get in touch if you are interested in telephone mediation.

Is tenancy mediation confidential?

Yes, we ask parties to sign a Liability and Confidentiality Agreement on the day of the tenancy mediation, to make sure that whatever is said goes no further. Provided we don't have any concerns for people's safety, we keep everything private so that you can speak freely.

In addition, all notes related to the case are disposed of upon completion, and no-one can compel us to report back on the mediation or to disclose its content.

Is tenancy mediation voluntary?

Yes, people cannot be made to take part in tenancy mediation. There needs to be a willingness to participate and a preparedness to reach some kind of resolution that both sides can live with.

If parties were to be coerced or forced to take part on the day, this would hinder the result of the mediation, lessen people's commitment to the process, and ultimately make it less likely that they would arrive at a successful conclusion.

What we will say, however, is that mediation is strongly recommended if things progress towards court. It can harm your case if the other side has offered mediation and you have unreasonably refused to take part and, in many instances, mediation will bring your dispute to an end.

Can a solicitor attend the tenancy mediation session?

Tenancy disputes sometimes hinge upon whether someone is or isn't meeting their obligations within the law. In these cases it is wise to at least have a legal adviser at the end of the phone during mediation.

When it comes to signing a mediation agreement, which could affect your entitlements or your legal position, you especially need to have some legal advice to ensure that you are not signing away your rights.

If the issues are more to do with poor communication, general conduct, or an interpersonal matter, however, then we suggest that people attend on their own so that they can have more honest and open communication.

Our relational model of mediation...

Here at UK Mediation, we treat conflict as a failure of dialogue and as a breakdown in a relationship.

Our relational model, re:talk, aims to restore dialogue, repair relationships, and rebuild teams, while re:connect allows us to achieve the same objectives through online mediation.