Broken down by each debt enforcement agency, please can you tell me:
1. How many complaints has your council received relating to the behaviour or conduct of the enforcement agencies/bailiffs/debt collectors who have been working on behalf of your council?
2. How many of the complaints has your council upheld?
3. If known, how many complaints were passed to the Local Government & Social Care Ombudsman?
I would like this information regarding complaints received by the council since 1st January 2023 to 31st December 2023.
Compliance with this request would exceed the appropriate cost limit under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 which is £450 or 18 hours of officer time. The use of bailiffs is not a category that we record complaints against. Complaints about bailiffs could relate to any service and therefore would require a manual search of every complaint to locate and retrieve the information. A manual check of each complaint would take 5 minutes, there were approximately 1500 complaints for the period requested that would need to be checked, this is 125 hours and over officer time.
Under the Act, there is a duty to provide advice and assistance as to how a request can be refined to fit within the appropriate limit. Unfortunately, due to there being no complaints category for bailiffs this is not possible for this request.