Our first Board meeting of 2025 was in Birmingham, at the offices of Money Advice Trust, who kindly agreed to host the Board this time.
The main item on the agenda was the draft business plan and budget. And we started by reflecting on the significant progress made during 2024 against the work programme in our current business plan. This felt particularly significant given that the ECB has just launched our complaints system.
Looking ahead, there remains a lot of important work to do and the Board agreed that the overarching focus for 2025 would be on delivering operational oversight and ensuring that the benefits really start to be realised. This would cover three main areas:
- Successful operation of our new complaints process
- Developing and launching new standards on vulnerability and ability to pay
- Implementing operational oversight, including running a pilot of supervision visits.
Alongside these, we discussed the importance of working up more specific plans for engaging and influencing creditors, noting that there was particular scope to make further inroads with parking, utilities and some of the big road traffic focused creditors.
In terms of the budget, as we have previously trailed, the ECB’s budget will increase this year as it is the first time we will have full year staff costs for the core operational team (which will comprise 8.9 full time equivalent members of staff). The Board was cognisant of the current financial context of the sector and the importance of keeping costs proportionate. We have therefore sought to reduce discretionary spend in order to minimise the increase as far as possible. In this vein, the ECB will also remain a remote organisation, saving on accommodation and associated costs.
The next step is for the team to do some targeted consultation on the draft business plan and budget with key stakeholders, including discussing the business plan with the ECB’s Stakeholder Engagement Forum. Following this, we will run a short public consultation in February, which will include the full draft business plan and further detail on the draft budget. As always, we really want to hear peoples’ views on our plans so please look out for it. We will then return for another Board discussion in March, where we will consider consultation feedback and agree a final business plan and budget.
Next on the agenda was a paper on the demographics of those who experience enforcement action. It is interesting that there doesn’t currently appear to be regular published comprehensive data on the profile of those who experience enforcement. However, the team was able to present a paper that pulled together some of the related data that is available from other sources, including the advice sector and think tanks. Two of the findings that particularly stuck out are that we believe that women, particularly single women, and people from certain minority ethnic groups are disproportionately likely to experience enforcement action.
This sort of analysis is helpful starting point for future efforts to better develop understanding of who experiences enforcement and how your demographics might impact the experience of enforcement. We are not planning any direct research in this area at this stage but we are keen to look for further opportunities to develop our understanding through our work, and in partnership with other bodies who might hold or be able to gather relevant information.
The next morning, we had a session with the Revenues Lead at Birmingham City Council. This was an insightful opportunity to discuss the challenging financial situation facing Local Authorities across the country as they seek to maintain provision of crucial public services to their residents – and in particular the journey that Birmingham itself is on under the oversight of its Best Value Commissioners. Our discussion also covered the risks associated with social and added value provisions in tenders for enforcement services, as well as opportunities to use available data to tailor enforcement where there are known vulnerabilities in residents. The Board is looking forward to developing its thinking in these important areas and continuing discussions with other Local Authorities, who can play such an important role in driving fair enforcement.
The Board next meets virtually in March, when we are looking forward to returning to the business plan and budget and hearing about the first three months operation of our complaints scheme.
Catherine Brown
Chair, Enforcement Conduct Board