A big milestone in delivering our mission: The launch of the ECB’s new standards
Today marks a significant step forward for us here at the ECB, as we launch our new standards for enforcement work.
This launch represents months of research, consultation, and collaboration with stakeholders across the whole sector. I thank all those who took the time to share their views to help us reach this point.
Crucially, these new standards are being launched with strong support and endorsement from both the debt advice sector and the enforcement industry.
Why The Standards Matter
Our new standards make an essential contribution to achieving our mission: ensuring that all those who experience enforcement action are treated fairly.
They set a clear, measurable framework for how enforcement agents should conduct themselves and how firms should operate, seeking to raise professionalism and reinforce ethical conduct.
These standards will serve as the new benchmark for what modern, fair enforcement looks like, ensuring that agents, firms, and individuals understand their rights and obligations every step of the way.
Key Features of the New Standards
The standards lay out specific requirements on several core areas:
Standards for Firms: We are setting standards for enforcement firms and all front line staff (beyond just enforcement agents) for the first time. This recognizes the key role that accredited firms play in establishing cultures and processes that support fair enforcement. The standards place specific requirements on firms to have appropriate processes in place to monitor their own compliance with ECB standards and take action when they uncover issues.
Doorstep Conduct: The standards clearly outline acceptable behavior for enforcement agents during doorstep interactions, ensuring they always act with integrity and respect regardless of someone’s background and circumstances. Specific standards are set on unacceptable practices, such as placing a ‘foot in the door,’ misrepresentation of powers and threatening or intimidating behavior.
Clear Communication: We have also placed new requirements on enforcement agents and firms to provide clear, accessible, and timely information to those facing enforcement action and to ensure that those affected by enforcement action can easily contact someone at the firm to discuss their debt at the compliance stage.
Complaints Handling: We have developed a new set of requirements for how enforcement firms should manage complaints, which introduces a two-stage process aimed at expediting resolution.
The standards outline how firms should handle complaints, specify response timeframes and mandate that complaints be accepted through multiple channels.
Our complaints function will launch in January 2025. After this time, we will accept any new complaint about the conduct of an enforcement agent or firm where a person feels their initial complaint to the firm in question hasn’t been dealt with fairly or in a timely way by the firm.
The ECB’s standards are not just aspirational guidelines—they are tangible, measurable expectations for the sector and we will monitor compliance and take action where we find breaches.
Evidence
In addition to significant consultation and engagement, the development of our standards was informed by the findings of our recent independent research looking at interactions between Enforcement Agents and members of the public, captured on body worn video. You can find the full research report here.
A New Era of Oversight
The standards herald the start of a new chapter for the enforcement sector.
Whilst some of the standards, such as those for enforcement agents, will be implemented by January 2025, we recognise that some of the new standards for firms will require some time to be implemented properly and sustainably. We will be writing to accredited firms to set out further detail on our expectations for implementing the full standards.
We are looking forward to working with all stakeholders to achieve a smooth transition to full compliance with the new standards.
We will also now be turning our attention to development of new standards on vulnerability and ability to pay, which will for part of version 2 of the standards later in 2025.
You can read the full standards here.
Chris