Mandatory Membership of a Private Club

Ruth Callaway

There was an announcement this week on bailiffs, and the press releases that followed it used the word "win" a great deal. With me is Roger Wallis, who has spent close to forty years in the debt and insolvency industry and wrote a book called Bailiffs: The Truth. Roger — what was actually announced?

rdw

To hold a certificate — the piece of paper that lets a man turn up at your door and take your car — an enforcement agent will now have to be accredited by the Enforcement Conduct Board, or work for a firm that is. And complaints can go to the Board directly. Until this week, joining the Board was voluntary.

Ruth Callaway

Voluntary, and taken up by ninety-six per cent of firms.

rdw

That is the number to hold onto. Ninety-six per cent of bailiff firms had already joined. On High Court writs of control it is ninety-seven and a half per cent by market share. So the population brought inside the tent by this reform is the four per cent who said no.

Ruth Callaway

Which is still worth doing. Those were the firms nobody was watching at all.

rdw

It is worth doing, and I would not pretend otherwise. Hundreds of thousands of cases a year went through firms with no oversight whatsoever. But if ninety-six per cent of the industry was already accredited, and the accredited ninety-six per cent is where nearly all the complaints come from, then this closes a door on the people who were outside and changes nothing at all for the people inside.

Ruth Callaway

Several write-ups said the Board can now revoke a bailiff's licence.

rdw

It cannot. The certificate is granted by the County Court and cancelled by the County Court. What has changed is that accreditation is a condition of getting one, so if the Board withdraws accreditation the certificate becomes unobtainable as a consequence. That is a real lever. It is not a regulator with the power to strike somebody off, and the difference will matter the first time somebody tests it.

Ruth Callaway

And what is the Board? It is described everywhere as the regulator.

rdw

It is a private company limited by guarantee. Set up in 2022 by agreement between the enforcement industry and the debt advice charities. Funded by a levy on the firms it oversees. Directors appointed privately. No statutory footing at all. So what was announced this week makes membership of a private, industry-funded club compulsory. That is a step. It is not statutory regulation, and once we all start calling it regulation we get into the habit of thinking the job is finished.

Ruth Callaway

The statutory version does exist on paper.

rdw

It does. The Ministry of Justice consulted on putting the Board on a statutory footing, and that consultation closed on the twenty-first of July 2025.

Ruth Callaway

And where is it?

rdw

As of the middle of July this year, the official page still said responses were being analysed. Thirteen months. A liability order can be obtained and a car clamped in a fraction of that time, but the paperwork on regulating it is in its second year of being read.

Ruth Callaway

Then there is what the announcement leaves alone.

rdw

Fees. It says nothing about the compliance fee that lands the moment a case is passed across. Nothing about the enforcement fee that lands when somebody knocks. Nothing about fee stacking, where five liability orders against the same household become five sets of fees on the same doorstep. That is where the money actually comes out of people. The Board's own figures put it at around eight million cases in 2024, worth five point two billion pounds. Conduct standards govern how politely that is collected. They do not govern how much of it is fees.

Ruth Callaway

The fees did change earlier this year.

rdw

Separately, on the first of May, along with the notice period going to fourteen clear days. Nothing this week.

Ruth Callaway

And the creditor?

rdw

Untouched, and this is the part I would want people to keep hold of. The bailiff is the last twenty yards. The decision that matters was taken much earlier by whoever instructed him, and for most people at most doors that is a local authority, on council tax, exercising a discretion nobody regulates at all. A council can take a liability order and instruct enforcement the following week. It can also pick up the telephone. Nothing announced this week alters which of those it chooses.

Ruth Callaway

So where does that leave us.

rdw

A licensing gate has been shut on the four per cent, and the ninety-six per cent carry on under standards written by a body they pay for. Worth having. Do not file it under solved. New standards from the Board take effect in January 2027, and that is the next thing to read properly rather than to applaud.