CCR-PUBLICSECTOR CCR-PS
Left-right: Gareth Raisbeck; Ryan Robinson; Frances Coulson; Alastair Minchin
RT: Assets can, very much, be the ‘elephant in the room’ for the debt- advice sector. The last thing they want to talk about is assets, it is all about income and expenditure. That has largely been allowed to
happen because creditors do not want to put their heads above the parapet to ask whether it is fair that someone should live in a huge mansion but pay a pittance. Of course, on the one hand, you do
not want to penalise someone who has fallen on hard times, and have to make them move because of that, but you do, equally, have some people who deliberately set themselves up in a particular lifestyle, thinking that they are untouchable.
FC: There will also be problems for some local councils with the bankruptcy limit rising. People will be able run up four or five year’s of Council Tax debt while still remaining just under the limit.
SM: Clients are rightly cautious about orders for sale. Some clients will consider orders for sale but the policy for such action is extremely tight. You need to go through an enormous amount of communication effort before clients will proceed.
How much do clients want to dictate policy and process of litigation and enforcement? FC: Some time ago, there was much more talk about debt responsibility, which appears to have gone completely off the radar, but if you take a local council, for example, where someone has a lot of equity in their property, and they are not contributing like everyone else, is anyone saying ‘well what is wrong with having a charge on the house or enforcing that debt, because
June 2015
everyone else is bearing the burden?’ You do need a balance.
RR: We have had written guidance in the past from clients’ compliance functions, which at the top, said in bold letters ‘it does not matter how much you collect, as long as you are compliant’.
What is the future for the litigation and enforcement sector? PS: I am quite optimistic about the future in terms of the level of litigation. I think that levels will maintain or grow, because clients are becoming more sophisticated. I can see a future where they operate ‘incubation units’ where customers, who are in difficulties, set up an agreement to pay for a period of
that the government tends to see all debts as disputes, when they are not; they are not really disputed until they become defended. You very often have one party, who is desperately trying to engage, which is the creditor, and the other party, the customer, who is hiding away and does not want to get involved at all. Government has made successive
attempts to promote engagement between the parties. These attempts have generally been misguided and doomed to failure, placing more and more obligation upon the creditor and nothing upon the debtor.
AH: I would like to see the High Court enforcement officers (HCEO) dealing with everything under £600. I am not
Mediation works really well for genuine disputes, but the problem is that the government tends to see all debts as disputes, when they are not
time, and then come out of that process and face litigation, because the client cannot deal with them in a different way. I think it will be more a case of
sophisticated control, rather than just saying ‘here is a book of debts, go ahead’. The litigation we do will be more fruitful, because it is needed and appropriate.
WM: The new pre-action conduct practice direction is very insistent that ‘you must try alternative dispute resolution first’. There is more of an emphasis on trying to go down that route and evidencing that you have done so.
RT: Mediation works really well for genuine disputes, but the problem is
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sure that I fully understand why they are not allowed to do so.
AS: The High Court Enforcement Officers Association has been working with the Ministry of Justice since 2007 on the new enforcement regulations that were implemented last year. However, another area for review was
to look at the High Court and County Court Jurisdiction Order 1991, and the current limits set on the value of judgments that may be transferred to a HCEO. With creditors facing increased
pressures to try all avenues to recover debt, the issue of who enforces judgments is urgently in need of review. CCR-PS
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