Gentlemen you seem to have both missed the point in furtherance of your own agendas, the point i was trying to make is that people should pay their fines on time then they wouldnt have to worry about bailiffs calling. Its very easy to pin the fault on bailiffs for their actions and conveniently forget that the fines they are chasing are given for criminal acts and have not been paid. Maybe i do have an alarming lack of knowledge old bill, how you base this on one conversation with an enforcement manage i dont know, but i recognise that bailiffs are working in a very difficult situation with very little public support trying to enforce the will of the court. Instead of villifying bailiffs for their actions i think you should be encouraging people to pay their fines on time and not duck the issue then they will have no trouble with bailiffs

So just to get this straight; you were fined for having no TV license. You didnt pay the fine and were sent a warning by the court. You didnt respond to this and they sent you a second warning. You didnt respond to that and the matter was forwarded to a bailiff company The bailiff company wrote to you at which point you were charged an administration fee you didnt pay the fine and a bailiff attended at which point an attendance fee was applied, at this point you started to take the matter seriously and thought you best pay the fine. The point is that a warrant of distress was issued by the magistrate because you hadnt paid a criminal fine. You didnt engage with the bailiff company which is why a bailiff called. The bailiffs fees are legally recoverable and as regards 'threatening to break in', their warrant gives them that power under the Domestic Violence Criminal Victims Act 2004 scd 4a. Its not a threat just a warning of possible consequence was they believe you are a 'willful evader', which it would appear you were. As regards you Form4 complaint, forget it, the bailiff was an agent of the court seeking to collect the courts money, the fine, which you were trying to evade, the judge will just laugh at you and hit you with a bill for costs. The bailiff costs are agreed by the court and go on to form part of the outstanding fine, if you dont pay them the magistrate Court Act 1980 s.76 states that you could be arrested for a committal hearing and sent to prison, unlikely but it does happen. However you state that you changed address and never received the further steps notice, if this is true then you should have applied to the court for a statutory declaration to stay the proceedings, you would have to do this on Oath and therefore perjury rules would apply. Dont forget bailiff are agents of the court and act upon the courts instructions they can only work on what the court gives them so if that information is incorrect then its a failing of the court. Dont forget bailiffs have been opperating since the Act of Marlborough 1267, they have the law on their side