The ECB is delighted to be announcing the publication of our online register of accredited firms, marking an important step in the implementation of our accreditation scheme.
Publication of the register is also a significant milestone on the road to achieving our mission of ensuring that everyone who experiences enforcement action is treated fairly.
The scheme, which launched in September aims to create accountability and drive good practice within the enforcement sector.
Creditors will be able to use the register to make more informed purchasing decisions, ensuring that they are contracting with accredited firms who have made an active, public commitment to seeking higher standards.
This register will also provide the public with a valuable resource with which to verify a firm’s accredited status, so they can have confidence that any firm who claims to be ECB accredited is rightly doing so.
As we’d anticipated, accreditation was taken up widely across the board, from the largest national firms to smaller regional providers, and from across civil and high court enforcement.
In so doing, the enforcement industry has demonstrated its ongoing commitment to independent oversight of the sector.
Firms included in the register have agreed to follow the following first-year accreditation criteria:
• Complying with the requirements of current Ministry of Justice National Standards (which were previously advisory)
• Providing the ECB with Quarterly Data Returns
• Providing information to the ECB on request
• Payment of the levy (which funds independent oversight by the ECB) in a timely fashion
And we’re pleased to announce that a number of creditors have already publicly stated that they will only work with ECB accredited firms.
We’ll be continuing to develop the accreditation scheme and have plans to evolve the criteria next year to include complaints handling, and active monitoring of a new set of standards which we will be developing in consultation with the debt advice sector and the enforcement industry over the next few months.
As we’ll still be welcoming accreditation applications throughout the year, the register will continue to be updated on a monthly basis to reflect any of these new applications.
We’re delighted to have seen such a strong initial response to accreditation.
Please do take a look at the register here:
With accreditation in place, our focus now turns to developing our own standards, complaints handling processes and operating model and we look forward to working with partners and stakeholders on the development of these plans over the coming months.
