 Regulation of Enforcement Agents ( 79kb)
Summary of main points
Citizens Advice welcomes the renewed commitment by Government to bring the bailiff industry under the control of an independent regulator. However we are concerned that the proposals set out in this paper do not provide a sufficiently powerful or rigorous regulatory regime to properly address the sort of problems with bailiff practices highlighted in CAB evidence. We are particularly concerned about the following:
- That too little attention will be paid to the role of firms in promoting good practice
- That the regulator will not be sufficiently pro-active in setting and monitoring standards of practice for the bailiff industry
- That the powers available under the PSIA 2001 may prove inadequate to reign in persistent bad practice
- That there will be no improvement in the way that people can seek redress and relief against bad practices by bailiffs as no alternative to the current court based complaints system has been proposed
- That no clear strategy about the accreditation or content of training for bailiffs is been set out in this consultation paper.
- That the SIA will be asked to do little more than issue licenses on the basis of criminal record and other basic checks on applicants. We do not believe that this is an efficient or effective model for a modern regulator.
Citizens Advice would welcome the opportunity to work with the Government further on these proposals to achieve a framework of regulation for the bailiff industry that will be truly fit for the 21st century. Furthermore we urge the Government to learn from best practice and expertise in ‘what works’, for regulators. The principle that the enforcement industry should be subject has been long established and accepted by Government; we see no cause for further delay, prevarication, or legislative unwillingness in implementing this fundamentally necessary and long overdue reform to the justice system.
Introduction
Citizens Advice welcomes the opportunity to respond to this joint Home Office and Department for Constitutional Affairs consultation on the regulation of Enforcement Agents. The CAB service is a network of 462 independent Citizens Advice Bureaux that provide free, independent and impartial advice from more than 3,000 locations in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In 2005 /06 the CAB service dealt with 5.5 million new problems, and this included over 1.4 million problems relating specifically to debt. We estimate that the CAB service provided advice and assistance on debt problems to around 450,000 people in this year.
Some of the debt problems that CABx dealt with last year included issues about the way unpaid debt was being enforced either directly by creditors or their agents or as a result of a court process. More specifically, CABx received nearly 28,000 enquiries relating to enforcement of unpaid debt by bailiffs in this period. These are broken down by the type of debt being enforced as shown in the table below.
2005/06 Bailiff enquiries by debt type | Number of enquries |
|---|
Council Tax | 15,645 |
Magistrate's court fines | 3,982 |
Consumer credit debts | 3,695 |
Parking penalities and congestion charge | 2,695 |
Maintenance and child support | 1,056 |
Other | 863 |
Total | 27,936 |
Source: CASE data, Citizens Advice corporate management information team
We believe that the experience of dealing with these enquiries makes Citizens Advice well placed to talk about enforcement of debt by bailiffs and the regulation of bailiffs in particular.
Background to CAB evidence on debt enforcement by bailiffs: the need for regulation
CAB evidence has been highlighting problems with the practices of private bailiffs for a considerable time. We receive very little evidence about the practices of county court bailiffs or high court enforcement officers. For instance, in May 2000 Citizens Advice published an evidence report Undue Distress describing CAB clients’ experience of bailiffs. The report showed cases of bailiffs abusing their power or acting in excess of their powers, cases where bailiffs were overcharging debtors and cases of unreasonable behaviour or unreasonable demands for payment made by bailiffs. Unfortunately CAB evidence continues to highlight very similar problems with bailiff practices today. For example, we recently conducted snap shot survey of CAB clients who had sought advice on bailiff problems. Advisers were asked to complete a quick questionnaire that asked for the experiences of CAB clients in nine key areas of bailiff practices; drawn from existing legal requirements and sources of current good practice guidance such as the DCA National Standards for Enforcement Agents. The table below shows the results.
| Questions on bailiff practices | Answered Yes % | Answered No or not answered % | Total Returns |
|---|
Did the bailiffs misrepresent their powers of entry? | 37 | 63 | 507 |
Did the bailiffs threaten the client with imprisonment? | 23 | 77 | 507 |
Did the bailiffs overcharge the client with fees? | 35 | 65 | 507 |
Did the bailiffs harass or intimidate the client? | 61 | 39 | 507 |
Has the bureau or client experienced problems negotiating with the bailiffs? | 74 | 26 | 507 |
Did the bailiffs remove protected goods? | 4 | 96 | 507 |
Did the bailiffs seize third party goods (including goods on HP)? | 4 | 96 | 507 |
Was the client vulnerable? | 53 | 47 | 507 |
Did the bailiffs exercise discretion in a vulnerable situation? | 44 | 56 | 507 |
Source: Putting bailiffs on the spot audit questionnaire responses submitted by 131 CABx between October and December 2006
The problems that these CAB clients experienced with private bailiffs seem to be firmly about bad practice. In these cases existing good practice guidelines are ignored and legal powers and constraints mis-stated or over-stepped. Although this is a small sample,, the nature of the problems suggests that there is currently insufficient supervision of the way that bailiffs are enforcing debt. It is noteworthy that the cases in question were reported by CABx throughout England and Wales, so the problems we are seeing are not confined to a particular area. It is also noteworthy that the practices reported in this survey are concentrated amongst bailiffs employed by a relatively small number of firms. Indeed, 484 of the questionnaires returned by CABx identified a particular bailiff firm. Of these, 382 (or 79 per cent) related to just ten bailiff firms.
This suggests that the problems CABx are reporting are systemic rather than sporadic (in the sense that seemingly serious breaches of good practices are repeated across larger firms) and that they involve key market players rather than marginal backstreet firms. Even if these cases are only isolated events in the context of overall bailiff caseloads, the way that similar problems repeat within firms, across space and in a relatively short time frame strongly suggests that current standards of supervision within the bailiff industry are not sufficient to prevent bad practice and detriment to sometimes vulnerable people.
Further indication of the extent of this detriment is provided in the problems that CABx continue to report on a regular basis. As the following cases show, CAB clients are facing bailiff practices that deliberately contravene actual legal powers in a manner that seems wholly designed to intimidate and place undue pressure on people in financial difficulties.
Regulation of Enforcement Agents ( 79kb)
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