What the new financial year holds in store

As we approach the new financial year, we are taking a look at what we think will be coming up over the next 12 months in the world of civil enforcement.

Renters’ Rights Bill

This bill is currently at the Committee Stage in the House of Lords and is anticipated to come into effect around June/July.

It is likely that the new Act will have quite an impact on the social housing sector and will result in increased pressure on local authorities to collect more outstanding housing benefit overpayments.

It will affect existing tenancies, which will change from being assured shorthold tenancies (AST) to periodic tenancies. Whilst a tenant will only have to give two months’ notice to vacate at any point, the landlord will lose the right to “no fault” evictions under section 21 (which is being removed) and will have to issue a notice to evict under section 8.

This will make it harder – and a longer process – to gain possession of property from tenants. This could lead to increased waiting lists and pressure on housing stock.

Aside from the social housing stock, local authorities will be responsible for fining private sector landlords for breaches of the new legislation - up to £7,000 for less serious and initial breaches, but up to £40,000 or prosecution for serious or repeated breaches. They will also be able to issue civil penalties against landlords who evict tenants illegally.

This requirement to investigate and then fine private sector landlords will place an additional responsibility on the local authority and it is unclear whether the proceeds of the fines will be sufficient to fund this or whether additional funding will be available.

We spoke to Oxford City Council’s Local Tax & Benefit Service Delivery Manager, Laura Bessell, about the potential impact of the Renters’ Rights Bill, which you can read in this article.

CIVEA’s National Support Network hub

The National Support Network (NSN) helps enforcement companies put debtors in contact with the relevant support organisations that specialise in the areas where they need help.

As well as debt and enforcement, the NSN also holds details of advice and helplines for areas including divorce, bereavement, ill-health, redundancy and relationship breakdown.

The Support Hub can be accessed freely and anonymously at https://civea.nsn.org.uk.

Use of technology to support enforcement

Over recent years, technology has opened up so many benefits for enforcement, whether customer service, management reporting, connectivity or payments. This development continues apace and Excel is constantly reviewing where we can make enhancements.

For example, since we introduced NatWest Payit Open Banking for debtor payments, we have seen that this has now overtaken all the other pay by card options that we offer. Debtors can pay by via Payit on the website or through the debtor app and enforcement agents send Payit links as the primary payment method direct from their case management mobile app (Remote Bailiff) via SMS and email.

Our administration team is also finding that debtors find it seamless, secure and familiar. Some people prefer to just find out what they need to pay and put through a payment, where they don’t want to or can’t phone in.

Looking forward, we are also reviewing what artificial intelligence (AI) can do to support our clients and their customers. We are currently evaluating AI agents to answer routine debtor queries and signpost to the correct place. This will free up our team to answer more complex queries. The solution we choose will, as you would expect, work seamlessly with our case management and contact systems.

Enforcement Conduct Board progress

The ECB, launched in 2023, introduced a new set of enforcement standards on 29th October 2024, which clearly set out expectations for individual agents and firms in the enforcement sector, as part of their mission to make sure that people experiencing enforcement action are fairly treated.

These have been aligned with the National Standards and the ECB aims that the Ministry of Justice will, in time, withdraw the existing National Standards for enforcement, so that the ECB standards will become the single source.

The ECB has also launched a new complaints procedure, which came into effect on 1st January 2025, to support a more consistent approach to addressing complaints across the industry.

Support of Cancer Research UK

From a Group level, we have decided to combine all our fundraising efforts in 2025 to support Cancer Research UK. We are looking at events we can run to engage the whole team, including our enforcement agents who work remotely.

We asked everyone to nominate which charity we should support and then had a vote to select Cancer Research UK.

More details to follow shortly.