£90
Per completed case before tax and expenses.
A case completes when the bailiff recovers the amount outstanding[1] and all the fees and charges, presently £310.[2]
High Court bailiffs are rewarded a percentage of the total fees recovered and earn much higher rates per case as this is the highest grade of enforcement work.
The lowest grade of enforcement is unpaid magistrates’s court fines and the most dangerous debt stream to be working in. Debtors are often hardened and living in social housing, drug dealers, criminals and potentially violent offenders.
Council tax debtors can be vulnerable single-parent families in social housing, people on hard times, benefit claimants, disabled people, or non-English speaking foreigners unaware about council tax rebates, or that the owe council tax at all.
Traffic contravention debts, and debtors are generally middle class with a car, often cab, courier and delivery drivers. The work involve targeting vehicles, clamping and vehicle-taking with profit earned on storing and selling vehicles and not returning the balance of proceeds to the debtor.[4] The bailiff still get the same remuneration if he was able to collect the amount outstanding.
Over two-thirds of cases instructed to bailiffs, about 70%, are never recovered, leaving an enforcement success rate of about 30%. There is no official source, but from running a helpline since 2012, these figures are as accurate you can get.
Larger firms provide their bailiffs with a van, apparel, bodycam wheel clamps and training in the enforcement regulations. Smaller firms only offer web-based home video training and no equipment at all. Some bailiffs use their own cars and top up earnings by driving on UBER. Self employed bailiffs relying on their agency to give them work, but the seldom achieve the statutory minimum wage for the hours worked.
DVLA car tax clamping work, earns the minimum wage but they are provided with an ANPR van, apparel, wheel clamps and given a list of set routes to ply.
To earn £500 a week bailiffs must complete about 11 cases, even then the income is not risk-free. Debtors can litigate, apply for restraining orders, make chargebacks, third party claims and claims to exempt goods. This adds substantial cost to the enforcement agency paying lawyers to defend those claims, and its the bailiff working in the field that earns nothing.
There is risk and cost of Enforcement improprieties - breaches of the enforcement provisions. Under the statutory enforcement provisions, the creditor, local councils and government agencies, is litigated, not the enforcement agency.[5] The cost of defending and paying claims is borne by creditor. The creditor is protected by insurance provided by the contracting enforcement agencies, (who receive no remuneration from creditors for outsourcing enforcement work), and the enforcement agency Compensates the creditor.
Debtors and third parties are recommended never to litigating an enforcement agency. They hire solicitors that vexate the proceedings and use threatening language to deter claimants. One solicitor even has a policy to make ad-hominem attacks against claimants and their representatives, and even anonymously posted on the internet, a scathing attack on the proprietor of an enforcement advice agency.
High court enforcement cases are vulnerable to applications for stays of execution which nullifies all bailiffs fees and charges,[6][7] making the bailiff company and the creditor a loss on the case after paying the execution fee. Their profits are from business debtors, but due to the characteristic of the statutory fee Regulation reward bailiffs for high-value cases, bailiff company bosses cherry-pick the high-value work for themselves, or keep the work in-house, leaving the self employed bailiffs with the dregs and low-value cases.
Skullduggery is rife among enforcement agencies, because many bailiffs are self employed and are given work by their agencies.
The bailiff agencies have a policy not to pay its bailiffs for work done unless all the amount outstanding is recovered - or Paid in Full (PIF), and only then, the agency pays £90, with the agency keeping any profit made from transporting and storing the vehicle, and any surplus proceeds from the sale of the vehicle are rarely returned to the debtor.
The fee regulations state that bailiffs are entitled to a percentage of the sum recovered if that sum is less than the amount outstanding.[8][9]
Enforcement agencies keep the high value work for themselves, such as High Court writs, and business rates cases, and leave the self employed bailiffs the worthless, and low-success rate cases, such as council tax, and court fines.
[1] Paragraph 50(3) of Schedule 12 of the Tribunals Courts and Enforcement Act 2007
[2] Non High Court debs: Table 1 of the Schedule of the Taking Control of Goods (Fees) Regulations 2014
[3] High Court debts: Table 2 of the Schedule of the Taking Control of Goods (Fees) Regulations 2014
[4] An offence under Section 4 of the Fraud Act 2006, but police treat the crime a civil matter.
[5] Paragraph 66(6) of Schedule 12 of the Tribunals Courts and Enforcement Act 2007
[6] Regulation 3 of the Taking Control of Goods (Fees) Regulations 2014
[7] Regulation 17 of the Taking Control of Goods (Fees) Regulations 2014
[8] Regulation 13(4) of the Taking Control of Goods (Fees) Regulations 2014
[9] Contrary to Explanatory Note to Regulation 13
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