For the past couple of days, I have been on the phones speaking to landlords, solicitors and my own team to get a feel for what is happening on the ground ahead of the end of July.

Interestingly, but not surprising, around 85% of the new possession instructions coming into Landlord Action are now Section 21 cases where the notice has already been served and landlords are racing to issue their claims before 31 July. Everyone knows there is a deadline and the urgency is real.

I have been saying for months that we would see a huge surge in possession claims before Section 21 disappears, and that is exactly what is happening. The courts must be receiving an enormous volume of applications at a time when they are already under significant pressure.

Unfortunately, my own experience this week perfectly illustrates the problem.

I spent 55 minutes on hold trying to get through to Croydon County Court about a possession claim for a friend who is trying to sell his property in South London.

We originally issued the accelerated possession claim through Wandsworth County Court after serving a valid Section 21 notice. Three months later, we received a letter telling us the papers had to be re-served through Croydon instead. By that point the original Section 21 notice had expired, meaning we had to serve a fresh notice on the tenant before starting again.

To avoid any further delays, we personally hand-delivered the court papers to Croydon County Court to make sure they arrived safely. After hearing nothing for six weeks, I finally managed to get through to the court. The clerk gave me a claim number, which was encouraging, but then told me the application should actually have been dealt with by Wandsworth after all. The whole thing is time-consuming, frustrating and potentially costly. We are now having to make a formal complaint to the chief clerk.

This is not an isolated incident. This is the reality many landlords, solicitors and legal professionals are dealing with every day. That is why my advice to any landlord who is still relying on Section 21 is simple. Do not sit round hoping it is happening.

If you are making an application yourself, understand that you have one chance and one chance only to get it right. A simple administrative error, an incorrect form or a missing document could prove incredibly costly.

Personally, I would strongly recommend having the claim prepared or at least checked by an experienced solicitor before it is submitted. Where possible, I would also encourage landlords to hand-deliver their applications and court fee to the relevant court or instruct a reputable process server or courier to do so. At the very least, you want evidence that your papers arrived before the deadline.

My biggest concern is not just whether claims are submitted before 31 July, but whether they are actually issued by the court in time. Court staff are already under immense pressure. If there is a backlog in processing applications, questions will inevitably be asked about whether claims submitted close to the deadline have been properly issued.

I sincerely hope that does not happen, but it is something landlords should be aware of.

Even if a claim is issued before the deadline, I don't believe the problems end there.

Accelerated possession was introduced back in 1999 to provide a relatively straightforward paper-based process where, if everything was in order, a judge could review the paperwork and make a possession order without a hearing. On the whole, it has been an efficient process, until more recently, and particularly post-Covid.

Local authorities have rightly been told not to advise tenants simply to remain in properties until eviction. At the same time, tenants are becoming increasingly aware of the legal process and have greater access to information than ever before. With AI tools making it easier to prepare legal responses, I expect more claims to be defended, whether those defences ultimately succeed or not. Every defended claim adds further pressure to an already overstretched court system.

Then comes the biggest bottleneck of all, enforcement.  Even after a possession order has been granted, many landlords are still waiting months, and in some areas close to a year, for County Court bailiffs to carry out the eviction. That is simply unacceptable.

In more than 35 years of representing landlords, I have never known the court system to be under this level of strain. Before Covid there was serious discussion about creating dedicated Housing Courts. Since then, we have seen increasing use of loopholes such as Breathing Space, more regulation and more complexity, but nowhere near enough investment in digitising and modernising the courts themselves to make the possession process work efficiently.

I have long argued that the court system needs proper investment, better technology and more resources. Without it, delays will only continue to grow.

For now though, landlords who still intend to rely on Section 21 have one priority. Make sure your claim is accurate, make sure it is complete and, above all, make sure it is issued by the court before 31 July. With the clock ticking, you only get one opportunity to get this right.

As I've been saying for a long time, we're now entering the final stage of landlord panic. Thousands of landlords are racing to beat the deadline, and I have no doubt the Q3 court figures will show a significant spike in accelerated possession claims.

The real question is what happens next.

Those claims won't simply disappear once they are lodged. They still have to work their way through an already overstretched court system before many landlords face yet another lengthy wait for bailiffs. At the same time, more tenants will inevitably turn to their local authority for help with rehousing, placing even greater pressure on temporary accommodation and already overstretched housing departments.

Unless we see meaningful investment in the courts, this backlog is only going to get worse. We are not solving the problem, we are simply moving the pressure from one part of the housing system to another.