Mortgage and Landlord Possession Actions in England and Wales Courts, Quarterly Since 2003

Quarterly statistics from 2003 onwards on mortgage and landlord possession actions in the county courts of England and Wales, compiled by the Ministry of Justice. The data tracks the progression of possession claims through the legal stages of claims issued, orders made, warrants issued, and properties repossessed. The dataset is provided by the Greater London Authority.

Use Cases

• Analyze trends in housing market distress based on quarterly possession claim volumes.
• Model the progression of legal possession actions based on the stages of claims, orders, warrants, and repossessions.
• Assess regional differences in landlord and mortgage possession rates before Q4 2014.
• Evaluate the impact of economic or policy changes on court-based possession actions over time.

Strengths

• Long-term time series starting in 2003, providing over two decades of quarterly data.
• Data distinguishes between four key legal stages: claims issued, orders, warrants, and possessions.
• Explicitly clarifies the distinction between court actions and actual repossessions, improving interpretability.

Limitations

• Regional data is not available from Quarter 4 2014 onwards due to suppression of small numbers in local authority data.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Ministry of Justice, compiled by Greater London Authority.

Collection Method

Administrative data from county court possession action records.

Time Range

Quarterly data from 2003 onwards.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-24 21:05:13.774026; freshness should be verified.

Geography

County courts in England and Wales (regional data unavailable post-Q4 2014).