Bailiff and Enforcement Special Interest Group

The Bailiff and Enforcement Special Interest Group (BESIG) is chaired by Alan Clark of Marston Group. Vice Chair is Mandy Ainsworth of Worthing Borough Council.

This group is for any member interested in bailiff and enforcement work and all are welcome to attend. Meetings are held 4 times a year. If you would like to find out more about the Bailiff and Enforcement Special Interest Group, please contact Jane Hack by email: jane.h@britishparking.co.uk  

Latest News 

The Bailiffs & Enforcement Special Interest Group was formed in 2008 to help the Association respond to the Government’s enforcement initiatives and to help Association members to cope with their implementation. It would also raise the profile of bailiffs within the Association and create a valuable networking opportunity.

An Interim Committee was appointed for two years, after which they were replaced by elected representatives. In the event, the elections were brought forward by about six months to coincide with a more general re-structuring of the BPA’s SIGs and Regional groups. Alan Clark, a former Association President, was elected to the chair and the runner up, Mandy Ainsworth, agreed to act as vice chair.

At their presentation at PARKEX, Alan and Mandy acted out a sketch that demonstrated the gap in understanding and expectation there is between local authority staff and their contracted bailiffs, a gap they hope to shrink and bridge as they take the SIG forward.

Turning to the past year, BESIG met just a couple of times but one of the meetings included a presentation by a representative from the Security Industry Authority on the licensing of bailiffs, due for implementation along with new bailiff law in April 2012. Many found the presentation to be the clearest and most logical explanation of the proposal that they had read or heard.

The SIA will grant licences based on a clean Criminal Records Bureau check and success at a new bailiff qualification being prepared by City & Guilds. The SIA will not consider complaints about bailiffs – as the Government has stated repeatedly since it began to develop this proposal in 2006 – but it will act if a bailiff ceases to meet the criminality criteria. In other words, if the bailiff does something wrong that results in a criminal conviction, his or her licence could be revoked. The Ministry of Justice is still considering how lesser compliance failures should be handled.

BESIG decided to formally shelve its alternative proposal to SIA licensing – the Bailiffs & Enforcement Agents Council. This proposal was for a comprehensive, industry-funded but independent regulatory body that would operate under the auspices of the Privy Council. Although Ministers had stated in Parliament that it was being considered, the reality was that the MoJ had set its face against the proposal from the start. The proposal would therefore lie dormant, awaiting a change in Government policy – a change that few people expect.

A joint meeting with the Local Authority SIG was held in June 2009 and proved very popular. Among other issues, it took a close look at the new bailiff law, fees and regulation to be implemented in April 2012. Among the joint initiatives discussed were model tenders and contracts for bailiff services and a possible benchmarking project.