New writ volume will continue to grow

Whilst the 2024 writ numbers for the whole High Court enforcement industry won’t be published until around May, the 2023 numbers published by the High Court Enforcement Officers Association (HCEOA) show that 146,965 new writs were issued, a 3.4% increase over 2022. This demonstrates that instructions have recovered and grown since the pandemic, as 120,337 new writs were issued in 2019.

We expect this increase towards High Court enforcement as a recovery method will continue to grow this year, especially given the pressure County Court bailiffs are under.

For us as a Group, we saw our writ instructions grow by 6.6% in 2023, compared with the industry average of 3.4%.

In 2024, our writ instructions grew by a very significant amount – 41.1% - our thanks to all our clients who entrusted us to enforce on their behalf.

County Court inquiry

In January 2025, the justice select committee launched a new inquiry into the county court, “amid persistent concerns over capacity and resources”, after the previous one was cut short by the election.

Obviously, the majority of creditors rely on the county court to obtain judgments to recover debt and the delays are impacting them. When this is added to the enforcement delays by county court bailiffs, due to lack of capacity in many counties, this puts an increasing burden on the economy.

The inquiry will look at:

• The effect of delays
• How the court engages with litigants in person
• The condition of the county court estate
• The use of technology and data
• Fees and costs
• Judicial capacity
• What future reforms should be considered.

The justice select committee has launched a call for written evidence through its website.

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. This is 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. This should support a more consistent approach to addressing complaints across the industry.

Renters’ Rights Bill

This has gone back to the House of Lords for its second reading (January 2025) and will have a significant impact on the private rental sector.

You can read an update on the Bill in this article. We will keep you posted on developments as they occur.

In the meantime, any landlords with a possession order to remove tenants might want to consider instructing us to evict under a writ of possession before the Bill is passed into law. Waiting for county court bailiffs may mean that the time to take action runs out.

Here are the latest statistics from the Ministry of Justice on mortgage and landlord possessions for July to September 2024 on the average times for landlord claims:

• From claim to order – 11.6 weeks
• From claim to warrant – 14 weeks
• From claim to repossession – 37.8 weeks

So, a landlord receiving a possession order at the end of January, would, on average, need to wait till the end of July to have the eviction undertaken by a county court bailiff – as opposed to a matter of days by a High Court Enforcement Officer (HCEO).

The end of July may well be after the Bill becomes law, thus preventing the eviction from going ahead.

Other legislation

Since the election was announced last year, a number of initiatives have fallen by the wayside, including body-worn video camera legislation, modernisation of the court system and changing the High Court & County Court 1991 Jurisdiction order to allow the option to use an HCEO to enforce a judgment below £600.

It is our view that the modernisation of the court system needs to be undertaken before the Jurisdiction order will be changed, as the increased volume of writs would need a more digitised solution to drive efficiency.

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.