The ECB Board met in London last week and one of the things we talked about was how we could further increase our transparency. To that end, I’ll be aiming to write a blog after each meeting to explain the main areas that we discussed. Here is the first one.
Research and evidence
Developing a robust and reliable evidence base to inform our oversight is a key priority for the ECB and at this meeting, the Board discussed a paper on our research project to analyse of a large sample of Body Worn Video (BWV) of doorstep interaction in civil enforcement.
The Board discussed the overall methodology and approach to GDPR compliance, noting that the team have been able to receive the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) input into the design and have developed an approach to effectively manage the GDPR risks of this work. We also discussed the draft areas for assessment through the research, which were developed from reviewing case notes from the debt advice sector and discussions with industry to identify the potential areas of concern that we would like to better quantify and understand. The areas are:
• Misrepresentation of powers
• Threatening or intimidating behaviour by the Enforcement Agent
• Threatening or intimidating behaviour towards the Enforcement Agent
• Clear failures to respond to vulnerability
• Other breaches of the National Standards
In our discussion, we agreed that it was important to be clear that this project is about using research to inform the ECB’s approach to new national standards for enforcement agents, highlighting areas of concern, and themes and trends, which need to be addressed in the standards. In this way, the research will be extremely valuable in establishing the ECB’s overall approach to oversight, but the researchitself will not – on this occasion – be used for direct monitoring and oversight of firms.
When we publish the research report (next year), we will also publish themethodology in full, so that its scope is clear. Finally, as the analysis will only be able to focus on cases where there is BWV, we agreed that the research should also look to assess the prevalence of cases for which the BWV was not available.
The team will start the tender process for this research after they have concluded their engagement with stakeholders and our panel of enforcement experts.
Statutory underpinning
The other main policy item on the agenda was what the ECB’s line should be on statutory powers or statutory underpinning, mindful of the fact that the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) will review the case for this before the end of next year. We considered the pros and cons of the different statutory models and powers that might support the ECB to continue its work as well as whether there were benefits in remaining a completely non-statutory body.
We agreed that our statutory status should be determined by what we need in order to deliver the maximum impact in our mission of ensuring that everyone experiencing enforcement is fairly treated. We are making good progress in establishing an impactful oversight model without statutory powers, as demonstrated by creditor support and the high levels of applications for accreditation. There are some areas, though, where changes to the relevant statutes would help us be more effective and secure in our oversight, while protecting our independence and agility to act in service of the mission. We agreed to do some further work in this area to identify and define what specific powers would support our impact best and how they might be enacted.
We also noted that if some form of statutory underpinning were to be agreed it would be highly unlikely to be in place within the next 2 years, so we agreed to remain focused on achieving everything we can within the existing model meanwhile.
Local Government Association
As part of our Board meeting, we had an interesting session with Sarah Pickup, CEO of the Local Government Association (LGA). We discussed the pressures facing local authorities and the importance of fair and effective enforcement, and how the ECB, the LGA and Local Authorities might be able to work together towards ensuring fairness in enforcement action.
Our Director of Creditors and Government had attended the LGA’s Resources Board the week before and so this was a good opportunity to further extend and deepen our relationships with the LGA. We will continue to work with the LGA as they develop their Debt Maturity Framework, which we expect to reference the ECB.
Governance
Another priority in our business plan for this year is to establish the ECB as a cost-effective, impactful and credible oversight body and this relies on us having strong governance in place. We considered and approved a suite of new governance documents that will help to achieve this, including a scheme of delegations and financial policy, as well as signing off our annual accounts for last year and agreeing a mid-year budget reforecast for this year. It is comforting to see these frameworks coming together now that we have a staff team in place to take this work forward.
I hope this helps to provide some near real time insights into what we discussed last week. In addition to this blog, you can find the formal minutes of our Board meetings, and the CEO’s Report to the Board, published on our website: Board meetings / minutes – enforcementconductboard