Taking Control of Bailiff Reform
Citizens Advice has responded to today’s finding from the Justice committee’s inquiry into bailiffs and the enforcement of debt.
Partnering with 10 other advice agencies as part of the Taking Control on Bailiff Reform, we are calling for the Ministry of Justice to introduce independent bailiff regulation to enforce adequate standards in the bailiff industry.
In 2018/19 we helped 40,000 people with almost 104,000 bailiff issues, a rise of 16% on the year before and an increase overall of 43% since the governments 2014 bailiff reforms.
Problems include bailiffs not turning on their body cams, turning up without notice and not accepting reasonable payment offers. But its more than that, they are simply not walking the line between their legal rights and their moral responsibilities to do the right thing.
If your spouse was in the last days of their life and you contacted a bailiff to let them know you are in a difficult place, would you expect a sympathetic response? And yet, for one client the opposite happened, that vulnerability was used as a lever to coerce a payment the client could ill afford to make. Yes, I do not dispute there was a legal right to recover the debt using bailiff action but, in the circumstances, surely the moral thing to do was to postpone to a later date?
Currently there’s no incentive for bailiffs not to break the rules, they aren’t held to account. For example, bailiffs are misrepresenting their rights of entry, threatening to break in to people’s homes. 1 in 6 people (17%) contacted by bailiffs experienced a threat to break in, despite the fact the bailiff was pursuing a debt which did not give them the power to do this.
Around 3 in 4 people affected by bailiff rule breaking over the last 2 years didn’t make a complaint because they found the process too complicated or intimidating. People like John, a homeless man. John owes council tax to Local Authority in the South of England. He had an arrangement to pay a bailiff £20 per month. A problem with his universal credit caused him to miss a payment, despite offering to make up the missed payment by paying £40, the bailiff would not re-instate the payment arrangement, threatening instead to visit his elderly father, even though they know John does not live there. Another example of an entirely legal process being used when a moral judgement was the right way to go.
So, I am very pleased indeed to see MPs from across all parties call for a regulator to crack down on the bailiff industry. They’ve also rightly called for a complaints process to be established so problems are dealt with independently of the bailiff industry and out of the court system. Bailiffs regularly break the rules; our evidence has proved this.
All eyes are now on the Ministry of Justice, which must introduce these reforms as a matter of urgency. Self regulation simply doesn't work. Light touch intervention simply doesn't work. We need regulation. We need a complaints process with teeth. We need the Ministry of Justice to implement the recommendations outlined in the Taking Control of Bailiff Reform and make it happen.
To read the full report visit https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/about-us/policy/policy-research-topics/debt-and-money-policy-research/taking-control-the-need-for-fundamental-bailiff-reform/
If you have a bailiff problem and need help, contact your local Citizens Advice https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/about-us/contact-us/