Chief Executive’s Report, September 2025

Introduction

1. The last six weeks have seen our operational functions starting to take centre stage, as the Guardian article shed light on the significant oversight activity that we have been undertaking in relation to the identified case of overcharging. As set out in last month’s report and elaborated on in this one, this case has led to a reshaping of our plans for the remainder of the year, demonstrating risk-based oversight in practice.
   
   
2. This period has also seen significant engagement and progress on development of our new standards on vulnerability and ability to pay, which leaves us well placed for a productive and informative public consultation period.there has been significant activity across other areas of our programme as well, with our complaints caseload growing, our work on vulnerability and ability to pay progressing through the crucial external engagement stage and significant oversight activity in relation to identified breaches of standards and regulations on overcharging. These are all valuable opportunities to make a tangible difference in ensuring fairness for people who experiences enforcement action.

Financial management update
Levy

3. Virtually all levy payments have now been made, subject in some cases to an agreed payment plan, with a small number of Local Authority in-house teams having paid over the summer period.
    

July management accounts – summary

4. Total expenditure for the first four months of the financial year i.e. to the end of July was £438,062 against a budget of £460,731, giving an underspend of £22,669. The small underspend is largely a consequence of phasing and timing of expenditure. As expected, the degree of underspend is reducing month-by-month.  
   
   

5. In terms of the balance sheet, the cash position as at the end of July was £975,900. This has risen slightly since the last update to Board, as the final levy payments have come in. Accounting for current liabilities, our net current asset position is £1.196m (total assets currently stand at £1.256m).
   
   
6. We are starting the reforecast process for the financial year 2025/26 and will present a full update to Board at the October meeting. While we initially expected to be able to make a small contribution to building towards a prudent reserves position of six months by year end, given pressures expected to come through in the second half of the year, including resourcing a higher-than-expected volume of work on complaints, and more work on oversight activity, we are likely to end the financial year with closer to three months of reserves.

Staffing update

7. We held a successful team day in London on 13 August, where we had a session on diversity and inclusion, a session on how the work of the ECB fits within the overall justice system, and some cross-team training.

Data Protection and IT update

8. The IT contract invitation to tender closed on 31 July and we are meeting shortlisted companies in late August and early September to discuss the key elements of their submissions including pricing. Board members will recall that we are looking specifically for service provision to include standalone data protection and security provision, as well as data resilience, business continuity, and security audits.
   
   
9. We also issued an invitation to tender on website hosting and branding support which closed on 31 July. The submissions are in the process of being reviewed, and meetings with shortlisted companies will be taking place in September.
   
   
10. There have been no significant data incidents since the last Board meeting.

Accreditation

11. We have not added to the number of accredited organisations in this period, although we expect activity to pick up after the holiday period.  The Director of Policy & Oversight anticipates an application in the autumn from the Welsh in-house team visited before the Board meeting in July.
    

Oversight and Thematic Review

12. As the Board is aware, in the course of our oversight, the ECB has encountered some specific breaches of Regulation 11 of the Taking Control of Goods (Fees) Regulations and FS1.6 of the ECB’s Standards for Firms. This relates to failures to prevent charging of multiple enforcement fees, in circumstances where enforcement powers could reasonably have been exercised at the same time.
    
    
13. The issues that have been identified have been dealt with in line with our oversight framework. Comprehensive remediation plans have been put in place to provide refunds for people affected, independently investigate root causes and ensure implementation of appropriate measures to ensure prevention of future recurrence. We are currently monitoring delivery of these plans closely, particularly on the progress of the investigation and its emerging results, and seeking reassurances that the issues identified are being adequately addressed.
    
    
14. To ensure that this sort of overcharging is not occurring more widely in the market, the ECB will be launching a Thematic Review in the enforcement industry into the charging of fees to those in debt. The last Board meeting in July noted that this Thematic Review would cover case linking and charging of multiple enforcement fees. We are now proposing to extend the scope of this Review to cover ‘sale or disposal’ fees too, following identification of some potential concerns about overcharging in that area, and are communicating this widening of ECB oversight activity to all accredited firms. This is covered in the Board Paper submitted to the September meeting.  This will require the Thematic Review to be progressed to a longer timescale, with delivery now expected to conclude in early 2026.
    

ECB Standards Development

15. We have continued to progress work on developing the vulnerability and ability to pay (VA2P) standards and are on track to launch our public consultation in September. This has included a further workshop with industry, progress on the lived experience work and Enforcement Agents workshops and working closely with our lawyers to develop a first draft of the new standards for the consultation.
    
    
16. We ran a final workshop on 23 July for any firm that wished to participate and had not attended one of the first three workshops. This means that all accredited firms had the opportunity to contribute their views ahead of the consultation that we will launch on the draft standards in September. The discussion in the final workshop reflected some of the themes from the earlier workshops, but we received some positive and constructive feedback particularly on our approach and the vulnerability definition. We continue to be confident that the main proposals from the ECB’s early thinking remain on the right lines, but we have also reflected some of the feedback from the workshops in our drafting of instructions to lawyers to prepare the draft standards for the formal consultation.
    
    
17. The Board has a paper on the agenda for this meeting which includes a draft consultation paper and draft standards.
    

Complaints handling

18. Our complaints casework continues to grow. As of 20 August, we had 84 live cases. They were distributed as follows: 14 at Initial Consideration, 19 at Further Consideration and 51 are at investigation stage. Of those at investigation, 5 were at draft decision stage, 9 were under investigation with the remainder pooled for allocation.
    
    

19. Incoming cases to the ECB have remained consistent since June and we are now receiving on average 20 cases per week. We will monitor closely whether this changes because of the recent media coverage on enforcement. The number of cases being accepted for investigation continues to increase slowly, and we accepted 18 cases for investigation in July. 
    
    

20. As expected, given staff changes and leave over the summer, this has been a challenging period for the Complaints Team. The focus has remained on progressing complaints as far as possible, managing the expectations of the parties and providing regular updates.
    
    

21. We have recruited an Enquiries Officer to the Complaints Team for 2 days a week to undertake the Further Consideration stage. The Enquiries Officer started in late August and, depending on numbers, will enable our new investigators to focus on investigation cases. 
    
    

22. As we move into September and October, we will review the composition of the Complaints team and whether we require more capacity and at what stages of the process.  
    
    

23. To date we have closed 317 cases. 271 at Initial Consideration, 24 at Further Consideration and 21 at Investigation stage. As expected, our performance against our KPIs has taken a bit of a hit.  We expect this to continue, as we make in-roads to cases that have been waiting attention. 
    
    

24. Our investigations so far have demonstrated the value of the independent investigation of complaints, with over half having been either upheld in some way or resolved without the need for a formal investigation decision. The investigation outcomes are set out in the table below.
    
    

Investigation Outcome	Number
Resolution achieved or offered after submission of complaint	3
Not upheld	7
Partly upheld	8
Upheld	1
Referred to body	1

25. Since the last Board meeting in July, we have considered two service complaints, which we did not uphold. 
      

26. We continue to work with our case management provider (Tizo) to improve our case management and reporting systems and are finalising the draft demographic questionnaire, which we will bring to Board for approval.
    
    
27. Our work with the Public Services Ombudsman Wales (PSOW) on the Memorandum of Understanding continues, and we are in the process of finalising the draft MoU with them. In line with Board’s earlier agreement, this will be passed to the Chair for agreement outside of Board.

Creditor engagement

28. Our engagement with creditors has been lighter this month as we have prioritised the oversight issue, thematic review and development of the new standards. The Chief Executive had a useful meeting with the British Parking Association (BPA) at which we agreed to work together to reach Local Authority parking creditors, to increase awareness of the ECB. We intend to run workshops for Local Authority delegates at the BPA forums this Autumn.
    
    
    
29. We are developing a longer-range plan for engaging with and influencing creditors. We hope to discuss this with the Board as part of our wider Business Plan conversations later this year.

Political strategy and public affairs

30. The Board agreed our draft response to the Government’s consultation on statutory regulation at its meeting on 16 July, and the final response was then submitted shortly afterwards. We hope to have a series of meetings with the Ministry of Justice after the holiday season to discuss key aspects of the consultation, including the options for the accountability and administrative status.
    
    
31. We have published our blueprint for statutory regulation, consisting of a short report and an infographic setting out our key arguments. The publications sparked a lively debate on LinkedIn, focusing primarily on whether the ECB should take over the certification of agents. We intend to share the report and infographic with MPs when Parliament returns in the autumn, as a means to setting up meetings and building support for the legislation before it is introduced.

Communications and Engagement

32. As noted earlier, in mid-August we were contacted by a Guardian journalist who was investigating the overcharging of enforcement fees. The journalist was already very well informed, having spoken to the relevant creditors and other sources. We provided the Guardian with a statement and some additional information on the relevant rules and regulations. The article was published on 15 August and included our statement and information from the briefing. The topic was later picked up by other publications, including The Sun and Credit Connect.
    
    
33. We shared the article on our LinkedIn page and this again led to a number of comments and opinions from our followers. Off the back of the article, we have had people reach out to us with other related intelligence that will be fed into the thematic review.
    
    
34. Our stakeholder engagement has focused primarily on Vulnerability and Ability to Pay in July and August, with the workshops taking up a considerable amount of resource. In addition, we held our regular meetings with the Ministry of Justice policy team and met with the CEO of CIVEA and the Chair of the HCEOA to update on a number of matters.
    
    
35. Engagement with our LinkedIn page continues to increase. We gained 90 new followers across July and August, and comments on our posts increased by 140% (compared to May and June). Whilst our overall numbers are still relatively low, these figures are encouraging and demonstrate that interest in our work is growing.