The challenge of making a success of the Enforcement Conduct Board (ECB)

At the start of this month, I had the pleasure of speaking at CIVEA’s AGM.

As the new Chief of Executive of the Enforcement Conduct Board (ECB), it was a welcome opportunity to thank CIVEA, and its members, for supporting the creation of the ECB as an independent oversight body for the sector, and for funding us for our initial year.

Launched last Autumn, the ECB has an important mandate to ensure fair treatment for all those experiencing enforcement action. Personally, I’m very excited about the challenge of making a success of the ECB, as this is a sector that urgently needs a balanced and evidence-based oversight body to provide demonstrable accountability and an independent voice on key issues. I come to the role with over 15 years of experience of developing approaches and frameworks that put the public interest at the heart of oversight and regulation.

The ECB will not always do as the industry, or other stakeholders, think we should. That wouldn’t be realistic or practical. But what I hope we will always do is to engage and listen with an open mind and not shy away from difficult conversations. Above all, we will explain how we have taken your views into account, and why we have made the decisions that we have.

An example of this is the published report of the findings from the recent public consultation on our first-ever business plan. The report can be found on our website – it summarises the responses that we received and how we’ve taken these into account when finalising our business plan for the year ahead.

Our final business plan lays out five priorities for the coming year –which are set out in the box opposite.

The most imminent project is this summer’s launch of an accreditation scheme which will be an important and useful public record of enforcement firms who have signed up to the ECB’s oversight.

Given the support we have received so far from the industry, I am hopeful that we will get extremely wide coverage of the market through our accreditation scheme.

In my next column, I will be explaining more about this scheme and how you can sign up to it.

We are starting our work in full recognition that asking you to put your trust in the ECB is a leap of faith. But we are committed to listening to you and firmly believe that an effective, independent ECB will be as good for the sector as it will be for the wider public.

So thank you for the support you have given us to date – we look forward to working with you all to deliver our mission of ensuring that everyone experiencing enforcement is fairly treated.

To achieve the organisation’s potential, our work will be governed by three overarching themes.

Firstly, we will be working with a full understanding and appreciation that when it is done right and fairly, enforcement work is an important public service – one that plays a key role in supporting the ongoing funding and delivery of important local services to citizens, as well as helping to underpin our wider economic model by ensuring that debts to any party are honoured by those who can afford to do so. And we recognise that Enforcement Agents do hard and often dangerous work, and are more likely to be stigmatized than thanked for it. It will take time, but I think that independent oversight can be helpful in recognising the public value of fair enforcement work, as well as rooting out incidents of poor practice that can harm the whole industry.

Secondly, we will be transparent and accountable. We will make it easy for the industry, for the debt advice sector, for creditors and for the general public to know what we are doing and why. We will actively look to engage everyone in our work, sharing ideas and holding ourselves to account.

We’ve already started publishing my monthly CEO’s reports to our Board, as well as regular newsletters and blogs. And from the Autumn, I will be writing a regular column here in Enforcement News in which I will be sharing news, updates and developments.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly of all, we will be a listening organisation committed to fully immersing ourselves in and understanding the sector, from all perspectives. We will be working to ensure that we hear from a wide range of voices and take all views into account in our oversight.