This month’s Board meeting held over two days in Abergavenny provided the perfect
opportunity for us to catch up with Dŵr Cymru/Welsh Water, who were one of the
very first creditors to make the commitment to only work with ECB accredited
providers, back in 2023 when the ECB was just starting out.
But before we welcomed Dŵr Cymru, the Board meeting started with consideration
of our draft response to the MoJ’s consultation on giving the ECB statutory powers.
We had benefitted from a targeted Board workshop on this subject two weeks prior,
where we had discussed in detail the case for the ECB getting statutory powers,
what powers we will need and how the ECB should be accountable to Government
or Parliament. So, this meeting was an opportunity to consider the final drafting of
our response.
Our response welcomes the MoJ’s commitment to act in this area and sets out a
relatively simple and targeted framework for how we think statutory powers should
work. For the vast majority of firms who are already under our oversight this would
not mean a significant change, but for the public, these changes will have a really
significant impact – especially for those who are currently on the receiving end of
enforcement from firms who have refused our oversight. It is imperative that the MoJ
now follows through on its commitment and acts quickly on this simple but important
intervention, in the interests of fairness to the public, creditors and ethical
enforcement firms.
Our written response has since been submitted to the MoJ and will soon be
published on our website alongside a “blueprint for independent oversight” that
brings the key elements together in a more accessible format.
We moved on to discuss recent issues identified in relation to linking and
overcharging of enforcement stage fees. For some time we have identified this as a
potential risk area. Although we have not yet undertaken targeted work in this area,
we have already identified and responded to some clear breaches of the rules on
overcharging. As a result, the Board has agreed that we will now prioritise a wider
Thematic Review into this area to establish whether or not this is an issue that is
happening more widely in the market. This will become the main oversight activity for
the remainder of this year, pushing back our plans for a broader pilot of monitoring
visits to firms.
We discussed the scope and scale of this thematic review, particularly around the
number of firms that we will select to participate in the initial review and how far back
we will look to assess compliance. We also covered how we plan to share the
anonymised results and what we will do in response to any identified breaches of our
standards. We will publish further information on all of these areas in the next few
weeks, when we launch the review. The current plan is for the review to start in
August and for us to be in a position to report on our top-level findings by the end of
the year.
Our last agenda item covered plans for publishing consolidated evidence on what is
happening in the market. It is incredibly important to the ECB that we are informed,
as far as possible, by reliable evidence on what is happening in the market. But we
also see an important role for us in sharing that evidence for the benefit of others
with a stake in this sector.
To this end, we agreed to introduce two new reports to our annual work plans:
1) An insights report, which would cover anonymised and aggregated evidence
and data from our complaints and oversight functions and our data returns
from firms. We plan to publish the first one in the autumn. The intention would
be to provide an up to date and reliable picture on what is happening with
enforcement, where risks are materialising and how often. In future years, this
could also include evidence from any independent research that we conduct.
2) An impact report, focused on analysing the ECB’s impact in pursuing our
mission of ensuring that everyone who experiences enforcement is treated
fairly. This should help to show the progress being made as well as
highlighting any areas where more needs to be done. This report will be
published alongside our annual business plan or annual report.
That concluded Wednesday’s part of the meeting, so it was not until the next
morning that we met Dŵr Cymru, to discuss the role that creditors can play in
supporting and encouraging fair enforcement. It was excellent to discuss some of the
important safeguards that creditors can put in place to help ensure that enforcement
firms are receiving cases that are appropriate for enforcement, as well as the role
that creditors can play in holding their enforcement providers to account to ensure
they are acting in line with standards, regulations and creditors own requirements. At
the same time, the session served as a valuable reminder of the important role that
enforcement can play in helping to reduce arrears and support ongoing provision of
public services. These are all important topics that we expect to give increasing
focus in future years, as we turn our attention more squarely upon our goal of
influencing creditor behaviour towards fair enforcement.
Our next meeting is an online one in September when we are looking forward to
reviewing, among other items, the draft consultation paper on Vulnerability and
Ability to Pay.
Catherine Brown
Chair, Enforcement Conduct Board