COLLECTIONS CCR
Government Ombudsman seen changes in the sort of complaints we get about enforcement agents – or bailiffs as everyone else still calls them? In 2013-2014 we saw an increase in
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the number of local taxation complaints we received. This seems to have been mainly due to the introduction of Council Tax support, changes in charging Council Tax on empty properties and what seems to be a greater emphasis on collecting old debts. In 2014-2015 we saw a drop, possibly as taxpayers got used to the changes. The number of complaints involving
some allegation of malpractice by bailiffs appears to be the same. In 2014-2015 we asked a council to provide a remedy for around 120 local tax cases; in about 10% of those cases
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ince the ‘Taking Control of Goods’ Regulations (TCOG) came into force last April, has the Local
bailiffs were partly or wholly at fault. For parking and highway cases the numbers remedied were smaller – 34 – but a third involved bailiffs. All of these cases involve pre-reform bailiff action, so what of the new process? There is a time lag for a change in
the law to feed through into complaints to us. First there has to be time for the change to have an effect; then any complaint has to go though the local authorities’ own complaint processes, and finally it will take us time to investigate before coming to a decision. At present we have not published any
cases where we have found fault with bailiffs using the TCOG process, but I am aware of a couple of cases now being investigated where there was, on the face of it, some fault. Our investigations will establish if this was the case or not. We have seen TCOG cases where there has been no fault by the bailiffs.
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Most of these involve the charges bailiffs have made. Unlike the pre-April 2014 law, TCOG is very clear about what bailiffs can charge. As I said, in one case, charging £235 for a knock on the door may seem excessive, but it is what the law allows. As yet we have had no complaints involving charging VAT or the Sale Fee before removing goods, or any of the post-removal charges and, given the uncertainty about most of these areas, we might suggest any such complaints would better be resolved in court. We still get complaints about bailiffs’
behaviour. We have had at least two cases where there was footage from a body-mounted camera, which provided the hard evidence usually lacking for such complaints. In one case it showed the bailiff had behaved properly in the face of considerable provocation; the other case is still under investigation.
July 2015
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