We were back online for the March Board and had a lot to discuss following a busy 6 weeks for the ECB, since our last Board meeting.
We started by discussing matters coming out of the Chief Executive’s Report. We talked about the feedback that has been coming through from industry in the early discussions around the ECB’s draft budget and business plan for 2026/27. We reflected on what firms are telling us about the challenging financial climate for the industry and the impact that ongoing delays to implementation of the 5% fee rise are having, as well as the potential implementation challenges arising from the way the fee rise is likely to be brought in.
As a Board, we understand the concern about the proposed increase in our budget, in the light of this climate. At the same time, we have an important mission to deliver and the data from our complaints process evidences the need for us to build our operational capacity. Board members welcomed the plans for the team to do some more detailed sessions with members of CIVEA and the HCEOA in March, providing greater detail and transparency on budget lines and resourcing assumptions.
We will agree the final budget and business plan at our meeting in April. By this time, we will have received and analysed consultation responses as well as feedback from the more detailed budget sessions. We will also know whether the MoJ has delivered the 5% fee rise that it committed to again last year.
The first substantive item on the agenda was the draft report on our recent consultation on draft Vulnerability and Ability to Pay Standards. We had discussed the most significant changes, following consultation, at our last Board meeting. This was therefore an opportunity to discuss and agree the final standards, alongside the full analysis of responses to the consultation.
We also had the final reports from the research we commissioned from people who have experienced enforcement, and with enforcement agents. We have been feeding the emerging findings from these reports into our work all along but it was good to see the full reports on each of these processes come together. The findings are woven into the report on the consultation. Both of these reports will be published in the coming weeks, so that everyone can see the full findings.
The Board approved the final standards and consultation report, both of which will be published later in March. The Board reflected on a successful consultation process – we received extensive, constructive feedback from a wide range of sources. As a result, the final standards are significantly improved from the draft standards we consulted on. We believe that this version is a more proportionate and targeted means of achieving the desired outcomes. We are grateful to all who took the time to contribute and help us get to this position.
Publishing final standards in this area will be a very big milestone for the ECB and our mission to ensure that everyone who receives enforcement action is treated fairly. This has always been a priority area for the ECB and one which we knew would take extensive engagement to get right.
Once the standards are out, attention will turn to implementation. Accredited firms will have nine months to develop and build their approaches to ensure compliance, recognising the significance of the new requirements. Our compliance team will be checking progress on implementation plans along the way and will be preparing to monitor compliance once the standards come into force.
After this item, we moved on to discuss the headline findings from our recent thematic review into overcharging and application of fees in the enforcement process. This has been a very productive process and it was heartening to hear from the team that the engagement from the firms selected to take part in the review has been constructive. This bodes well as we start to develop and roll out our pilot monitoring visit programme through 2026/27. The next step will be for the team to provide individual reports to the firms who were visited, detailing our findings in relation to the firm. The full report on the whole thematic review will be on the agenda for our next Board meeting and we plan to publish this in early May. The findings in this report will not be attributable to individual firms.
The final item concerned how we approach our ambition to influence positive creditor behaviour that supports, rather than hampers, fair enforcement.
We do not oversee creditors directly and are not seeking to do so. But it is clear that upstream creditor behaviour can have a big impact on how enforcement firms and enforcement agents are able to do their jobs further down the line. This has been a theme throughout discussions with industry from when I first started at the ECB and it was also something that came out of our recent research with Enforcement Agents.
We started by considering the ways in which creditor behaviour can support fair and effective enforcement, alongside some of the creditor behaviours that we have heard from firms and agents are making it harder.
Ultimately, we want to establish how we can have the most impact in this area without expending significant time and resource, given the other important priorities we have. With this in mind, we discussed the fact that road traffic and parking enforcement is the largest volume area and so it would be sensible to target this area, focussing initially on some of the larger volume creditors. We also noted the significant volume of enforcement of criminal fines, which highlights the importance of HMCTS as a creditor.
The next step for the team will be to dig deeper into the available data on the creditor market and refine our sense of who we might seek to work closely with to better understand both good and harmful practices.
And that concluded the main business of the meeting. We look forward to an in-person meeting next, in April.
Catherine Brown
Chair, Enforcement Conduct Board