Better regulations for the bailiff industry: what we're calling for

Last month saw the launch of our new research into public sector debt collection, and the launch of our Council Tax Trap campaign, which will change legislation that is driving some of the most aggressive debt collection practices by:

1. Slowing down the speed with which council tax bills escalate, where currently someone can be faced with their full annual bill just 3 weeks after a missed payment; 
2. Introduce a cap on the fees and charges that people in arrears face just weeks into their council tax collection journey. 

It also saw the Enforcement Conduct Board (the body responsible for standards in the bailiff industry) close their consultation on new standards to guide the bailiff industry.

Launched in 2021, the Enforcement Conduct Board (ECB) is the oversight body for the debt enforcement sector in England and Wales. It currently operates through a voluntary accreditation scheme which bailiffs, and the firms they operate within, sign up for. 

This means that the ECB currently has no statutory underpinning, unlike other regulators like Ofgem, Ofcom or the FCA. Therefore, the ECB remains reliant on voluntary financial support from the enforcement industry, as well as requiring voluntary engagement in order to raise standards across industry as a whole.

While consultation on new standards is very welcome, we believe it’s essential that the ECB is granted statutory footing by the Ministry of Justice in order for those new standards to be meaningful. This would ensure that standards can be raised and remain enforced without requiring consent from industry, would ensure there are no grey areas for un-accredited firms, and ensure sanctions go beyond removal of membership for underperforming firms or agents. 

It would also guarantee the ECB’s future, by ensuring fees are compulsory for enforcement firms, rather than the current regime which relies on voluntary contributions.

The current standards for bailiffs are the Taking Control Goods: National Standards. Despite being just a decade old, they have long been unfit for purpose for people with mental health problems.  

Crucially, as we highlight in our 2018 report Fear and Foul Play, the list of vulnerable situations in paragraph 77 doesn’t recognise people with mental health problems as a specific group. For us, this sets the legal standard guiding bailiff behaviour around mental health dangerously low. 

While some enforcement firms have vulnerability policies that recognise mental health, regulation needs to be leading this charge to protect people across the board.

Nearly three quarters (73%) of people in council tax arrears who have heard from a bailiff have a mental health problem. Not having specific references in the standards to mental health problems means missing protections for a crucial population who find themselves on the receiving end of enforcement activity much more frequently than the average person. 

Our research also found that bailiff activity comes with acute harm, driving fear, isolation, anxiety and shame; whether that’s through invasions of privacy, undermining financial resilience with steep fees, or intimidating people in debt through aggressive action.

People with mental health problems are on the sharpest end of these harms, and the experiences we heard from our Research Community – a group of thousands of people with lived experience of mental health problems – show how bailiff activity could stand between people living mentally healthy lives.

It’s clear that with this toxic combination of being disproportionately affected and at the sharpest end of the stick, people with mental health problems need greater protections under these new standards.

We’ve put our name to the Taking Control Coalition consultation response, which calls for a range of changes to the proposed standards. However, key additions from Money and Mental Health reflect the recommendations we make in our report. 

First and foremost, we need to identify people with mental health problems as a specific vulnerable group within the new standards. But we can go beyond that, given the disproportionate impact on people with mental health problems.

We also believe these new standards should: 

• Introduce a requirement at the compliance stage for routine enquiry, by the enforcement firm, into whether the person in debt has a mental health problem;
• Mandate comprehensive mental health training for all enforcement officers. Given the prevalence of people with mental health problems amongst those experiencing enforcement action, training should ensure that any vulnerabilities not identified through the pre-action protocol process are subsequently identified by enforcement agents;
• Ensure all enforcement firms have enhanced vulnerability policies, designed in collaboration with the debt advice sector and people with lived experience;
• Require bailiffs to ensure that when they visit a person in debt who has been identified as experiencing a mental health problem, that person is offered a warm referral to follow up mental health support.

It’s generally accepted that the enforcement industry is a very different beast to decades past. But this doesn’t mean there isn’t still enormous potential to do better. 

If bailiffs are to continue playing a central role in debt collection, and public sector debt collection in particular, then getting these standards right is an essential step in protecting people from unnecessary psychological harm.