Is the pre-action protocol working?

In related figures, the Ministry of Justice saw a big drop in the number of lenders getting court permissions for the early stages of repossession. There were 17,054 repossession orders granted in the courts in the first three month of the year, which was 39 per cent lower than in the same period a year earlier and 43 per cent lower than in the last three months of 2008. The ministry said the mortgage pre-action protocol coincided with a fall of around 50 per cent in the number of new mortgage repossession claims being issued, but whether the protocol resulted in claims being delayed rather than abandoned was ‘unclear’.