Mortgages cases disposed orders made

The number of final orders made against mortgage cases disposed in the High Court. Datasets are produced on an annual year basis. The dataset is entered onto ICOS, the Integrated Courts Operations System. The data are then extracted and merged with the Central Postcode Directory, and aggregated information uploaded to this portal.

Northern Ireland Courts and Tribunals Service collects information on writs and originating summonses issued in respect of mortgages in Chancery Division of the Northern Ireland High Court. This covers both Northern Ireland Housing Executive and private mortgages, and relates to both domestic and commercial properties. A mortgage case may involve more than one address or a land property. In such cases, the first postcode address entered onto ICOS is used. Not all writs and originating summonses lead to eviction.

A plaintiff begins an action for an order for possession of property. The court, following a judicial hearing, may grant an order for possession. This entitles the plaintiff to apply for an order to have the defendant evicted. However, even where an order for eviction is issued the parties can still negotiate a compromise to prevent eviction.

When a case is disposed of, it may have more than one final order made. This database contains the last final order made. A description of the orders is below:

<b>Possession</b>: The court orders the defendant to deliver possession of the property to the plaintiff within a specified time. If the defendant fails to comply with the court order the plaintiff may proceed to apply to the Enforcement of Judgements Office to repossess the property and give possession of it to the plaintiff.
<b>Sale and Possession</b>: If the plaintiff seeks possession of property which is subject to an ‘equitable mortgage’ (i.e. normally one created informally by the deposit of deeds rather than the execution of a mortgage deed) the court may order a sale of the property to enable enforcement of the equitable mortgage and that the defendant give up possession for that purpose. The sale price is subject to approval by the court.
<b>Suspended Possession</b>: The court may postpone the date for delivery of possession if it is satisfied that the defendant is likely to be able, within a reasonable period, to pay any sums due under the mortgage, or to remedy any other breach of the obligations under the mortgage. A suspended possession order cannot be enforced by the plaintiff without the permission of the court, which will only be granted after a further hearing.
<b>Other</b>: other orders include strike out, dismiss action, and other less common orders.
<b>Strike out</b>: This occurs when the moving party does not wish to proceed any further, or when the court rules that there is no reasonable ground for bringing or defending the mortgage action.
<b>Dismiss action</b>: The mortgage action is dismissed by the courts.
<b>Other orders</b>: These include: (a) Declaration of possession coupled with an order for sale in lieu of partition and (b) Stay of Eviction - after a Possession Order is granted but prior to actual repossession, the Defendant may apply to Court to seek a stay of eviction which, if granted, prevents repossession for a certain defined period.

Users of this data may have been able to self-identify themselves due to the low values in some cells. Primary and secondary disclosure control methods have been applied to this data, denoted by cells with missing data in the tables. Values of less than four, but not zero, were initially suppressed, but some of these values could have been calculated using some row and column totals and thus secondary suppression was applied to the next lowest value in the row and column.

The data contain the number of final orders made against cases disposed by each Assembly Area and have the following proportions of postcode coverage: 2010, 97.8%; 2011, 97.3%; 2012, 97.7%; 2013, 96.5%; 2014, 96.0%; 2015, 94.8%; 2016, 95.5%; 2017, 95.1%; 2018, 94.8%; 2019, 93.8%; 2020, 95.6%; 2021, 93.6%; 2022, 95.3%; 2023, 97.5%; 2024, 95.7%.

Organization: NISRA