What are the advantages?

One important advantage of Mediation over other ways of sorting problems out is that it allows you to define the terms of any agreement you want to reach, rather than having a judgement imposed by a court. You can come to an agreement, which you construct yourselves, between you, which is something that a court could not order in the same detail or with the same flexibility if you took legal action.

 It is also important to understand that mediators do not make judgements about who is right and who is wrong in a dispute. What we need for a successful Mediation is two (or more) parties who want to change what is happening now. We help with that,  but not by telling the parties concerned what their answers are. If the system is to be flexible enough to allow people to work out their own solutions with us, we cannot be telling them what to do at the same time.

 

More detail about how Mediation works

Mediation is a process for resolving problems between people or companies that is used in a number of different situations. In most types of mediation, the following steps take place:
1. When one person asks for mediation, all those involved are contacted to check they agree to take part. Anyone can withdraw at any stage if they want to. This is important. Mediation aims at producing results that the people in dispute want. We don’t twist anyone’s arms to do what they don’t want to do.
2. Mediators may then visit everyone involved individually. Or it may be that a written presentation paper giving an explanation of the dispute will be enough. The mediators need to understand the situation and to have a broad idea of how parties would like it to be settled. They will also ask if there are any direct suggestions the parties have for sorting out the disagreement.

3. The aim is to be able to bring people together around the table to argue their case with each other in a way that cannot be done in court. This may be face-to-face, it may be largely in separate rooms with the mediators talking with each party in turn, or very often it is a mixture of both.

If both parties agree to come to a joint meeting, the following steps take place:
1. Mediators explain the structure of the meeting and ask everyone to agree to some basic rules to ensure the meeting runs smoothly.
2. Each person will then have a chance to talk about the problem as it affects them. This is essentially a statement of why they are in mediation, what the problem is.
3. They will then help both parties identify the issues that need to be sorted out. The process may involve no more than round-table discussions; it may involve talking to each party in separate rooms, some of the time.

This process can take as little as half an hour. In a large and contentious case, it may take the best part of a day.

 

What types of dispute do you deal with?

We can deal with a wide range of disputes, including housing, business disputes, small-debt claims, neighbour and land boundary disputes, personal injury, and many more. Just give us a call to ask and we can discuss how we can help you.

 

Who needs to know about all this?

Information shared during the mediation is private and confidential unless otherwise agreed. For example, in a workplace dispute, if anyone else at work is affected by the agreement disputing parties reach, they may have to be informed of any new arrangements agreed on. Otherwise, ALL the content of a Mediation meeting is private.

Outcomes

A Mediation will ideally lead to an agreement between parties. There are a number of possibilities if parties reach an agreement, usually depending on the kind of dispute being mediated.

-- In a neighbour dispute, agreements can be written down and signed between parties if they choose. Because of the nature of neighbour disputes, such an agreement is very rarely enforceable in law – legal evidence or proof can be very difficult to get. But where parties want to, an agreement can be written up anyway, even if informally.

-- In a legal or commercial dispute, it can very often be the opposite – that a formal and legally-binding agreement needs to be written between parties. Otherwise there may be no formal resolution of a formal legal or commercial problem.

 The parties can therefore sign what becomes, in effect, a legal contract between them. However, it is not legally binding and cannot be enforced in court until the parties decide to sign up to it as a legal contract. If a dispute has come to us from the Courts in the first place, parties can usually go back and have their agreement endorsed by the court if they wish.

There are also areas of dispute where an agreement may be more or less appropriate, depending on the circumstances and on what the parties decide. The commonest of these areas is workplace disputes.

There are no fixed results in mediation. Both sides must agree on what they want to happen. If people want someone to decide for them, mediation is not the route to choose. On the other hand, mediation does offer the chance of constructing a result that includes all the details which you want dealt with, which the court may not be able or even willing to rule on.

And it is worth remembering that many people come out of a court case as unsatisfied with the result as before they started.

 

What does it cost?

There is a charge for Mediation, though at WMS we try to keep this as modest as possible.

1.      Many neighbour disputes are referred to us by social landlords – Housing Associations or council housing departments. In such a case, the landlord usually pays for the case fee.

2.      If neighbours who are in dispute are private tenants or home owners, we tie the fee to the level that people would pay if they went to the Small Claims Court, which is usually between £50 and £150 each, depending on how complicated the case is – numbers of people involved, whether there needs to be an interpreter or not, involvement of children in the dispute, etc.

3.      In cases which are close to going to the Small Claims Court, or which may actually have issued a claim in court, there is a charge in the same range as 2 above.

4.      In higher value County Court cases, either before or after a claim has been issued in court, the price range is between £250 - £400 each, again depending on the level of the dispute and the other complications mentioned above.

 

It is worth explaining that we have a formal policy about the charges we make –

We try to be sure that if a mediation does not produce a positive result – an agreement that means you don’t have to go to court – the cost of the mediation will not have a serious impact on the overall cost of going to law. In other words, two or three hundred pounds, or whatever the fee, will not make a huge difference if parties do go to court and are prepared to spend some thousands doing so.

 

Why bother? Why spend money on it?

It is worth realising that taking a case to the County Court can easily cost some thousands, if not many thousands. Quite apart from the stress, anger, confusion and stress again, the cost can be huge. People often rush to law, in anger and frustration, and only stop to reflect when the first bills start to come in. Mediation is meant to be a way of avoiding these problems.

There is also another ‘saving’ to be made by going to mediation rather than to court. This is in time (and the money this can represent) and in stress. When one is angry or upset about a dispute, the thought is often that one wants to go to court and ‘win’ the battle with the other party. There are two drawbacks to this –

a)      It is difficult to stay angry for a long time and the stress factor of taking a case to court kicks in as one realises the amount of work and the wear on the nerves that are involved.

b)      You don’t always ‘win’ what you want from a court judgement, even if you ‘win’ the case in court. Lots of disputes simply don’t lend themselves to a 100% win outcome.

 

What’s so wrong with going to court?

A good way to test this is to ask anyone you know who has been through even a small court case if they would want to do it again. Or whether they would choose something like mediation instead, if they had the chance again. Nine times out of ten, the answer will be ‘no way’ would they want to go through court proceedings again.

Probably the commonest single complaint from people coming out of a court is that they didn’t have a chance to say their bit, to make their case. This is because of the way that court hearings work. We have all watched too much television where the case is won by brilliant argument in the middle of a hearing. Unfortunately, it only tends to happen like that on TV, rather than in real life.

The text-book tends to describe mediation as offering a win/win outcome. This is perhaps a little overstated. A better emphasis is perhaps to say that it provides a ‘no lose/no-lose’ opportunity, because you don’t have to agree to anything in a mediation that you don’t want.  

 

I am interested in mediation, how can I proceed?

Please click on 'contact us' in the menu (in the left margin) for details of how to speak to us directly or via email or by post.

 

It is well worth talking it through with us before you decide to go to court. We don’t charge anyone for that and we will give you the best information and advice about your circumstances that we can. That, after all, is why we are here.