Proposed Pre Action Protocol for Debt Claims

[unclebulgaria67]

5.2 If the debtor requests a document or information, the creditor must –

(a) provide the document or information; or

(b) explain why the document or information is unavailable,

within 30 days of receipt of the request.

 

No doubt those more knowledgeable about defending claims will think about how this affects the advice given on CAG. If DCA's are issuing claims without having the CCA on file, then it will interesting what DCA's are going to say in response re (b). If the DCA writes back saying that the CCA is not currently available and will be requested from the OC, then they have satisfied this new rule.

[citizenB]

Were they not already obliged to say if they did or didn't have the document and why ?

 

In the early days, was it not also the case that if they couldn't provide this information within a certain time frame then they couldn't proceed with any action?

[unclebulgaria67]

I am not sure these rules change good practice that should already be followed, but just look to confirm what should already be happening. The courts can then look at the process followed by DCA's to make sure it complied with these rules. At the moment, i guess that a Judge can't look at the process as such, but simply apply the law.

 

No doubt Andy and other legal bods will consider likely effect of these, with their comments to follow

[silverfox1961]

In the 'old' days, debt collection firms relied on consumer lack of knowledge to get either default wins or when a consumer capitulated and made arrangement to pay and the court claim was dropped.

 

Nowadays, when a claim is issued, the creditor has none of the required documentation to fulfil the pre-action protocols. All they have is a name, address, account number and amount outstanding. This would be sent as a document or a CD/DVD as the debt collectors bought thousands of these debts.

 

There was a major argument when the proposal to include the agreement was mooted. As we can see, that has been watered down to all documents that can easily be located. The agreement (where there is a paper one) would be hard to find and if scanned into a computer system and the original disposed of can cause problems as the scanners used in the old days were not up to the job and be able to get a clear scan was almost impossible.