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We have drawn together the attached briefing setting out our concerns about the Government’s current ‘breathing space’ scheme. This highlights the need for five fundamental improvements:
- For debt advisers to be provided with control over the moratorium period, which must be permitted to exceed 60-days where the debtor’s circumstances warrant this.
- For the abolition of the ‘mid-way- review, which will waste time and valuable resources and negatively impact the adviser-client relationship.
- Provide debt advisers with the discretion to omit some debts where this is in the best interests of the client. For example, including rent arrears for people with assured shorthold tenancies could encourage landlords to serve Section 21 notices.
- Set penalties for creditor non-compliance. There is currently no meaningful source of redress.
- Improve ‘debt solutions’ by immediately lowering fees for Debt Relief Orders and bankruptcy fees; removing the upper limit for Debt Relief Order debts, and increasing the disposable income limit for Debt Relief Orders. A ‘root and branch’ review of statutory and non-statutory debt solutions is also needed; with the aim of removing financial and other barriers to accessing insolvency, and ensuring that nobody is expected to repay debts over an unreasonable period.
You can download the briefing as a pdf here.
