Do bailiffs come to your house with hi-vis jackets or hazmat suits and in a car?

The enforcement regulations do not require bailiffs to wear any particular attire, or drive a particular type of vehicle.

Guidelines say that bailiffs must carry out their duties in a professional, calm and dignified manner. They must dress and speak appropriately and act with discretion and fairness.^[1]

Bailiffs prefer not to use hi-viz attire because that exposes themselves clamping cars under cover of darkness in the early hours of the morning.

They wear police-like body armour, in come cases, before 2017, with the police-like markings and radio loops. These are usually supplied by the bailiff company that employs them, e.g. Marston Group Limited.

Self-employed bailiffs, and bailiffs working for a company that do not supply body armour for its bailiffs, e.g Newlyn Plc, wear smart casual clothes and drive their own vehicles.

Some bailiffs are given a van with ANPR cameras and use them to crawl the street looking for vehicles with unpaid traffic contravention debts, and do a drive-by clamping when they find one.^[2]

Self-employed bailiffs working in the enforcement of High Court writs, provide their own attire and vehicular transport at their own expense.

^{[1] Paragraph 26 of the Taking Control of Goods: National Standards 2014, April 2014
[2] See Bailiffs and drive-by clamping and enforcement}