Community mediation
This page contains information about community mediation, including:
What it does
Who provides community mediation?
Advantages and disadvantages
Which complaints are eligible and which are not?
Other options for neighbour disputes
Cost
Timescale
Procedure
Advisers and supporters
Outcomes
Research on mediation and legal action
What it does
Community mediation services have been around for a long time in the UK. They work on the principle that members of the local community are the best people to resolve local disputes. Mediators are trained, but usually work as volunteers. Community mediators specialise in resolving disputes among residents and neighbours, such as noise nuisance, harassment, and boundaries.
Many community mediation services offer mediation in a range of other disputes: what they have in common is that they are to do with relationships. They include:
- young people and their parents
- homeless young people and their families
- elderly people and their carers
- co-workers
- families and local education authorities
- local businesses and consumers
Some community mediation services also help to set up and run peer mediation in schools. Schemes like this aim to teach children to manage disputes better, and to prevent bullying. Other services work with their local youth justice or youth offending teams to offer victim/offender mediation.
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Who provides community mediation?
Local community mediation services are usually independent charities. Some are funded by the local authority, or are set up by a local authority housing department, and most provide mediation at no cost to the parties.
Mediation UK was the national umbrella body for community mediation, with more than 120 member services as well as individual mediator members. However, in October 2006 Mediation UK went into voluntary liquidation, and there is currently no umbrella group for community mediation services. It used to be possible to locate your local community mediation service on the Mediation UK website, but this is no longer available. In January 2007 an on-line Directory of UK Mediation was set up. This provides a searchable database of community mediation services in the UK, which is kept up-to-date. However, not all community mediation services are in this database. If you want to find your nearest service, try an internet search, or contact your local authority.
The Scottish Mediation Network has details of all mediation providers in Scotland, including community mediation services.
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Advantages
- It is independent.
- The parties decide the outcome together
- It is private
- It is usually free
- It can be quick
- It is not adversarial, so it can help maintain ongoing relationships
- It gives parties a chance to have their say
- It can address problems of communication breakdown
- It can provide a way forward where there are no legal remedies
- A wide range of outcomes is possible
Disadvantages
- It will not prove someone wrong or right
- It cannot guarantee a resolution is reached
- You can’t make the other person take part if they don’t want to
- There are no guarantees that a mediated agreement will be kept
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Which complaints are eligible and which are not?
Community mediation services deal with a wide range of problems. Check you’re your local service which areas they work in, as they are all different. Some services are only funded to deal with particular disputes; for example, a local authority may fund a community mediation service to mediate in disputes between council tenants. Some services only cover local areas. The types of disputes dealt with by community mediation generally include:
- neighbour disputes involving noise, children, harassment, boundaries, parking, pets
- disputes between tenants and their landlords
- disputes that involve issues affecting groups of residents
- disputes over small amounts of money
- disputes about planning applications
- workplace and other interpersonal problems
Some community mediation services will not get involved in disputes between tenants and landlords; If the landlord is the local authority, and the local authority funds the mediation service, there could be a conflict of interest.
Community mediation is unlikely to be suitable if the dispute:
- involves physical violence or serious threats of violence
- is about racial harassment
- needs a court ruling on a point of law
- needs a court to enforce the final outcome
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Other options for neighbour disputes
If you have a dispute with your neighbour, mediation may be a way to resolve the problem. But sometimes neighbour disputes get past the stage when mediation will help. Landlords have a responsibility to try to resolve disputes amongst tenants, and may suggest mediation as part of their attempt to find a solution. If the landlord won’t help, or won’t take a problem seriously, you can make a complaint about the landlord to the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) if you are a council tenant, or to the Housing Ombudsman Service if the landlord is a housing association. The LGO has published guidelines for local authorities on handling neighbour problems, which can help you approach your landlord and request help. They can also help you decide whether or not to complain to the LGO if the landlord is unwilling to get involved. There is a link to the LGO website at the bottom of this page.
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Cost
Most services offer free mediation. This is usually because their work is funded by charitable trusts or the local authority.
There are also freelance community mediators, who make a charge for their work. If you are using a freelance mediator, it is up to you to negotiate the fee with the mediator, and to decide how to split the cost between you and the other parties.
Legal Aid is available, in principle, to cover the costs of mediation for eligible clients in England and Wales. But you should note that as Legal Aid is not usually available for legal representation in neighbour disputes, it is also unlikely to be available for mediation in this kind of dispute, unless it is a special case.
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Timescale
The time taken to conclude a case in community mediation depends on the availability of parties to attend appointments and on the number of sessions needed. Cases might take anything from three weeks to three months to resolve.
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Procedure
Referral
In most cases you can contact the service directly, either by phone or letter. In some services you must be referred by a housing officer. When you speak to the service, the staff will help you work out whether the situation is appropriate for mediation. If it is, an initial appointment will be made for you to see a mediator, and talk about the problem in more detail. Since most services are in high demand, you may find yourself waiting in a queue for this appointment.
Community mediation is voluntary; it is up to you whether you take part. No-one should be forced, bullied or over-persuaded into going to a mediation appointment.
Community mediation services are usually quite good at making sure they are accessible to everyone. You should be able to take part without filling in lengthy forms, and interpreters and signers can be provided on request. Venues with disabled access can usually be arranged.
Note: Increasingly, landlords are turning to community mediation as a relatively cheap way to deal with harassment between tenants without threatening court or eviction. Mediation may be useful in such cases; but there is a risk that landlords might be avoiding their responsibilities. If you think mediation might help, it’s always worth trying. But don’t let a landlord fob you off with mediation when they should be taking a firm line on monitoring and enforcing their own tenancy conditions.
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Initial assessment and visits
If you are the person who first gets in touch with the community mediation service, a member of the intake team will talk to you about whether or not your problem is appropriate for mediation. If it is, then they will arrange a time for you to meet with a mediator and talk in more detail about what is going on. Once you have talked things through with the mediator, the service will usually contact the other party to ask if they would like to see a mediator as well. Unless you want to, there is no need for you to contact the other party to the dispute directly. If both parties have contacted the service separately about the same problem, or if they have jointly agreed to use mediation, then the service will arrange to see them both. These initial meetings can be at home or at the mediation service.
If both parties agree to try mediation, a joint meeting will then be arranged with the mediator. This usually lasts two to three hours and is a chance for the parties to hear each other’s point of view, and to work together on a resolution that they both find acceptable.
Some disputes involve a number of parties. In such cases mediators will arrange to see each party separately or, where group interests are involved, a representative from each group.
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The mediation session
The joint mediation meeting will be held in a neutral place – either at the mediation service, a local community centre, or somewhere that is agreed by everyone taking part. Interpreters can be provided.
If requested, and if everyone agrees, parties can bring ‘supporters’ who give them moral support but do not take part in the session. It is not like a court hearing – the mediators will not call witnesses, and are unlikely to allow others who are not directly involved to take part in the session.
One of the big advantages of mediation is that it is very flexible. Mediators will always try to be responsive to the parties’ needs in terms of how the mediation is structured. Mediation sessions usually last two to three hours, but shorter or longer sessions can be arranged if that fits in better with the needs of the people involved.
If the parties are able to reach an agreement, they can usually choose whether they are happy with a verbal agreement, or whether they would like it written down. Neither is legally binding, but often the service will agree to follow up an agreement after a few months to see if it is working. These agreements belong to the parties – in other words, they are not shown to anyone else unless you all agree.
You may not feel able to meet together with the other party to the dispute, or the mediator may feel that a joint meeting would be unhelpful or risky. In this case, the mediator can arrange ‘shuttle’ mediation. This involves the mediator going back and forth between the parties, who are in separate rooms. The mediator will pass on messages, exchange information and settlement offers, and try to negotiate a solution without the parties actually sitting in the same room together.
If you want to find out more about how neighbour mediation works, have a look at Maria’s story.
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Advisers and supporters
Mediators will not advise you on your legal rights, so if you’re not sure about your legal position, get some independent legal advice. This might be advice about whether mediation is the right course of action for you, or it might be about whether any mediated agreement is fair. In community mediation, it is very unusual to take a legal adviser along to the mediation. The emphasis is on each person telling their own story, improving communication, and building up trust and goodwill.
Other non-legal supporters can have a useful role to play in helping you through mediation. It is important for everyone to speak for themselves and use their own words, but if you need help to do this, don’t be afraid to talk to the mediator about it in advance.
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Outcomes
One of the advantages of mediation in community and neighbour disputes is that there is great flexibility in the kind of agreements which can be made. Community mediators often produce very creative solutions to problems. A complaint about noise levels might involve sharing information about work patterns, understanding the times of day when it is most important for a neighbour to have some peace and quiet, and then making an agreement that takes this into account. Community mediation is also a good way for groups of neighbours with a common problem to agree to approach the landlord together, and request action on noise insulation or repairs.
Another advantage of mediation is that mediators will be looking to the future as well as the present. They won’t just try to get an agreement about the current problem – they will try to help neighbours learn how to talk to each other. It’s unrealistic to expect warring neighbours to become friends, but if future problems arise, they may be able to work together on sorting out a solution.
Community mediation agreements are self-enforcing. This means that it is up to the parties themselves to see that the terms of the agreement are kept. Mediators might take a role in following up the agreement – checking later to see if it is working – but they will not act as enforcers. This can be one of the disadvantages of mediation, as mediated agreements only work if both sides are prepared to keep to them. Often they can work well, because everyone involved has taken part in sorting out a solution that they think will work for them. But if the agreement breaks down in practice, there is no system for enforcing it.
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Research on mediation and legal action
Information about research into community mediation can be found in the ADR Research Summaries section of this site.
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June 2008
