Vulnerability

Our staff are trained to help identify, manage and support debtors with vulnerability and mental health issues and use the ‘TEXAS’ approach to do so. Our enforcement agents, welfare teams and customer service staff have all received training on vulnerability and mental health awareness in relation to civil enforcement.

We consider a vulnerable person to be someone who does not have the capacity to deal with their affairs in respect of action being taken against them by the company. We have adopted a simple procedure to afford such persons respite from enforcement whilst claims are carefully considered.

National Standards

The Taking Control of Goods: National Standards 2014 give the following categories of people as having the potential to be vulnerable:

• Older people
• Disabled people
• Mentally ill
• The seriously ill
• The recently bereaved
  
• Single parent families
• Pregnant women
• Unemployed people
• Those who have obvious difficulty in understanding, speaking or reading English

Vulnerability is not clear cut; we must look at every claim of vulnerability and look at the individual circumstances and remember that vulnerability can be transient.

It is also important to note that these are circumstance where the debtor may be vulnerable, but it does not follow that a person who falls into one of these categories is automatically considered to be vulnerable.