The Association believes that its Code of Practice – used by the Office of Fair Trading as the template for its own industry guidance, and now updated to include a section specifically on tracing – renders the need for licensing “thoroughly pointless” (to quote CSA spokesperson Godfrey Lancashire).
Speaking exclusively to info4security, Lancashire explained: “We need to start from the premise that tracing is a lawful, necessary and justifiable procedure. It cannot be right that an individual may be allowed to ‘get away’ with harbouring a debt and doing nothing to change that situation simply because we cannot obtain access to their address. It’s high time the Government recognised the rights of creditors as well as debtors, and stopped putting barriers in our way.”
The barriers to which Lancashire refers include the new recommendations with regards to access of the edited electoral roll (which is being denied to the debt collection industry). Lancashire continued: “What a perverse world we live in where lenders can have access to the roll to lend, but collectors do not enjoy the same privilege in order to collect. That’s not a level playing field.”
SIA licensing: the bete noire
The CSA’s particular bete noire is now focused on the issue of licensing. “The Government is dithering as regards whether or not tracing falls under the SIA’s remit,” added Lancashire. “The crucial words in defining a private investigator are ‘anyone obtaining the whereabouts of somebody’ – which would clearly include tracing agents – and ‘anyone tracing information about somebody’ – which again would include status reports.”
Lancashire said: “The thrust of the Government’s argument is that it needs to prevent investigators from a series of ‘harms’ such as accessing data through unlawful means, conducting unlawful surveillance and using intimidating or threatening behaviour towards debtors, all of which would already breach our existing Code of Practice.”
Indeed, the revised Code goes further still, requiring that CSA members ‘take all reasonable steps to verify that the person traced is in fact the subject’ and that they verify the data relating to a subject’s whereabouts via one or more methods (for example, public and other available databases, sending appropriate trace communication to the last known – or an alternative – address, contacting third parties or carrying out investigations or enquiries, including visits to the last known address). It also requires of them that if the located individual is not the subject, then all appropriate records must be updated accordingly.
Agreed Best Practice standards
“The Code is already the safeguard between rogue tracing elements prepared to break the law and members of the CSA who conduct legitimate business both ethically and professionally, and to agreed Best Practice standards,” suggested Lancashire.
The CSA also feels that the sheer cost of licensing per person is also unworkable. “If we estimate that there are 15,000 staff involved in tracing, all of whom will require not just a licence but also the additional training, then the total cost to our industry will be around the GB pound 18 million mark. Probably even more when time and travel costs are taken into account,” opined Lancashire.
Lancashire finds it particularly ironic that the people trying to impose their “misguided will” on the tracing industry are those that probably need and use tracing agents the most. “The irony is not lost on us that it’s the Government who use us most to chase outstanding Council Tax payments, collect child support agency debt, fight benefit fraud, etc – all of which will become more difficult still if they do not give us better access to data, and if they don’t stop this folly around licensing.”
Ten-fold rise on 2006-2007
At the CSA’s recent Annual Conference, it was announced that the number of debts now requiring a ‘trace’ – ie where the debtor has moved premises without informing their creditors – has increased to more than eight million. This represents a ten-fold rise from the 860,000 reported cases in 2006-2007.
Given the current economic situation in which Britain finds itself, one suspects that situation can only worsen.
The CSA has now called for the creation of a National Address Register, the UK being the only EU nation aside from Greece without any form of such, and is putting pressure on the Government to place greater obligations on those who avail themselves of credit with the vast protection of the Consumer Credit Act behind them but then abuse that protection.
