What is a realistic charge for a bailiff attendance?

[lamma]

Consideration should be taken into account for costs of the bailiff(s), transport, time and the running of the business (back office)

Really ?

 

Irrespective of the number of warrants served ?

That is preposterous.

You need to revisit fixed and variable costs/overheads (and appropriate tax relief). Say for example, and for ease of numbers, that it costs your business 500,000 gbp p.a to run the back office and bailiffs etc. And you only get 5 warrants to enforce in that financial year.

Your stance would put the total claimable fees per warrant at 100,000 gbp (assuming all were satisfied and ignoring the profit element). If you got 500,000 warrants it would put the total claimable fees per warrant at 1 gbp per warrant (assuming all were satisfied and ignoring the profit element). Are you proposing a floating fee that goes down if you get moire warrants to enforce ? I think not. Sure there are costs of entry into the market place and critical mass issues - but they are there for all businesses to deal with.

Yours included.

Your suggestion would kill off the smaller, and so more agile and innovative, companies and reduce the field to just behemoths. And we all know that that leads to only to oligarchic pricing and customers being screwed And your industry has many vulnerable customers.

You get your business model wrong, and that includes you agreeing bad bargain contracts, and the consequences are yours. Across the industry as a whole outrageous charging is endemic (look at the Council parking tickets forum !) there is no 'one spreadsheet solution'. It is not a case of one size fits all. Easy answer to charges conundrum ?

Pay all bailiffs of whatever type a fixed salary. That won't stop certain well known companies from pressuring their bailiffs to ramp up the charges of course but it will level the playing field and highlight them, then they can be dealt with.

[lamma]

Its easy. Make overcharging a statutory offence (with teeth) - and enforce it. It will never happen, ask yourself why.

[lamma]

Then there will be 'problems' with the arithmetic and all sorts of amounts will be taken. Where is the line drawn that leaves someone enough to live on ? If that is a consideration at all, which is doubtful.

Edited November 28, 2012 by lamma

[lamma]

"They would recieve a wage in line with other civil servants, and be publicly accountable for their behaviour." Such accountability would perhaps be unique within the civil service.

[lamma]

But a certificated bailiff is not acting as a certificated bailiff when enforcing CPE parking tickets, he/she acting is merely in the capacity of a private bailiff and no more than that. Why on earth should a private bailiff get the same fees ? More so as in CPE matters when the vast majority of the back office function and costs etc are carried by the council and not be the bailiff. Except of course where the council has outsourced a lot of the work to the bailiff company. in which case the bailiff company has already been paid for it. Double dipping perhaps ?

[lamma]

Now the ad hominem stuff is over we can stop being sidetracked get back to the matter in hand. Any response to this http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?374208-What-is-a-realistic-charge-for-a-bailiff-attendance&p=4063951&viewfull=1#post4063951

[lamma]

"Of the debtor's that do want to clear what they owe most go into payment arrangements. Yes,there are fees added to the debt but that is the price of avoiding it." What on earth kind of thinking or logic is that. Agreeing a payment arrangement is not "avoiding it" at all. the entire context of your post was about payment not about the levy. it is clear that by "it" you refer to payment. I am sorry to say that your comment clearly indicates your blinkers. Please be accurate and factual. Then again being accurate (with charges) and sticking to facts (wrong address, wrong person, wrong car) does not seem common in your line of work. Such a gross misstatement from a HCEO is troubling. In any business there will those that won't or can't pay. Times are hard but it seems that bailiffs want to be lifted from that and have the public carry the consequence. the general public are fed up with that now, they have had enough of it.

[lamma]

"Clearly the most complained about enforcement is that by certificated bailiffs under the Distress for Rent Rules - CT, Parking, Mag Fines". More slanting. CT and Mag Fines have their own sets of conditions and applicable law. Both of which are different from each other and from those used for Parking. the first two are are more analogous to execution than to the common law right of a landlord to distrain for rent. I find it disengenuous and misleading for them to be grouped together as "Distress for Rent". For example: Parking PCNs in CPE areas are enforced by an agent of the council acting in the capacity of a mere private bailiff. They are certified but they do not act in that capacity. True they are certifoe but for all the power that gives them the condition may as well be that they are a Pisces. Similarly it is not "under the Distress for Rent Rules", it is "as if" they were were. There is a difference. the "as if" and the certificate are mere window dressing that give the colour of law so that the council can behave as a landlord. "As if" is not "is". Try driving "as if" the speed limits do not apply. QED. I will not go into the Three-card Monte that is CT enforcement, that is well known already.

Edited December 4, 2012 by lamma

[lamma]

isn't an action for damages against an HCEO (or ordinary bailiff) covered by their bond ?