Another warning on bailiffs

 

Bailiffs to increase debtors' fees as councils seek cut of profit

Ben Quinn

Harrow council expects to raise £1m by making bailiffs hand over 8% of their fees. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

Increasing numbers of households struggling with debts such as unpaid council tax will face the extra burden of rising fees levied on them by bailiffs after moves by councils to make more money from debt collection companies, according to bailiffs and advocates for vulnerable debtors.

The north-west London borough of Harrow expects to make £1m by making bailiffs hand over 8% of their fees. Other councils, under pressure to cope with austerity-driven cutbacks, are understood to be considering similar profit-sharing arrangements.

The move has been condemned by bailiff companies and by advocates for debt relief, who claim that it will lead to bailiffs pushing up fees and pursuing vulnerable people even more vociferously in an effort to maintain profits.

"It's going to create the level of competition that I don't believe should be created in an industry that has to deal with vulnerable people," said Jamie Waller, a bailiff and the founder of the JBW Group.

John Kruse, a leading expert on bailiff law in the UK, who also works for Citizens Advice in east London, agreed that the financial burden would be shouldered by vulnerable debtors. "What some of the more image-aware members of the sector are saying is that if bailiffs are asked to pay money to councils then that has to come from somewhere and the way it is going to be produced will be by bailiffs upping the fees that they are charging or being more aggressive about the way they chase people," he said. "The amounts that they collect at the moment are fees that they are allowed to collect by statute. That's their profit, so if the council is saying, 'We want to cut that profit now,' then it's either a case of the bailiffs making less money, which is unlikely, or they collect more money one way or another." Read more at www.guardian.co.uk

In this latest economic climate - brought about by poor Lieber governance - the burden on the most disadvantaged will increase exponentially as councils seek more ways of parting people with their money.
There are too many factors for one simple article to cover, but I shall try.
The case of vulnerability has been brushed under the legal carpet by everyone except victims and their families. Blackpool Magistrates courts pay lip service to combating what is fraud by a knowledgeable group of perpetual social claimants, rather than address their legal obligation and "duty of care" to real vulnerable people caught in the debtors trap. Charles Dickens would have had to work for a thousand years to write stories that cover the atrocities perpetrated by bailiffs on behalf of our dysfunctional legal system.

For Andy Miller, whose birthday should have been on the 24th of December, but who died when bailiffs ignored his frail disposition after he had suffered a stroke and heart attack just weeks earlier.