Mick McAteer, Chair, Registry Trust
Friday, 28th February 2025
Small changes to the way regulated companies treat County Court Judgments could make a big difference to people struggling with energy bills
With energy price hikes once again in the news, the energy regulator, Ofgem, has been consulting about new ways to improve experiences for people struggling to pay gas and electricity bills. Recent figures reveal that nearly seven million people are now in households in arrears with their energy supplier. The latest data from Ofgem suggests total debt and arrears on electricity and gas bills reached just over £3.8 billion in the third quarter of 2024: the highest level recorded.
Making more use of monetary judgment data, making changes to how the Register of Judgments works and improving the way regulated firms treat consumers are just some ideas for addressing debt prevention, debt support and debt recovery, making the situation better for consumers, utilities and regulators.
A County Court Judgment (CCJ) stays on the Register for six years, affecting access to affordable credit and other goods and services. The decision by a regulated firm to pursue a CCJ against someone with energy debts, or to sell those debts to third parties who then use the CCJ process, as well as how firms treat consumers with a CCJ, can have a significant impact on the wellbeing of vulnerable consumers both now and in the future.
As Ofgem itself has pointed out, energy debt is now the single most common type of debt that Citizens Advice deals with and energy arrears are the most common type of priority debt StepChange clients face, with 42% of clients who pay an energy bill in arrears.
Of course, commercial organisations have the right to act against unpaid debts. Not to do so could undermine the basis of commercial transactions. But in sectors like energy, no one would disagree that that right should be exercised fairly and responsibly.
The granular and live nature of the judgment data maintained by Registry Trust Ltd. (RTL) could be a valuable monitoring and supervisory tool for Ofgem and other UK Regulators Network (UKRN) regulators, enabling them to compare regulated firms’ stated policies on treating vulnerable customers fairly and empathetically against practice when it comes to enforcing judgments against consumers.
As things stand, there is much limited transparency on how often utility firms use CCJs to enforce outstanding debts; use third party firms to collect outstanding debts using CCJs; or sell outstanding debts to third party debt purchasers who then use CCJs.
It would be interesting to know whether the use of third-party firms of various types effectively conceals the extent to which energy debt results in the enforcement of a CCJ. It is something RTL would be happy to talk to Ofgem and other members of UKRN about, to establish greater transparency on how CCJs are used by firms to enforce debts, notably against vulnerable consumers.
More and better use of the data RTL holds could potentially support a more comprehensive approach to identifying and monitoring consumer vulnerability across the main regulated sectors, including energy. This could in turn help to target policy and regulatory interventions and support services more efficiently such as Priority Service Registers and the funding of debt advice based on the ‘polluter pays’ principle.
RTL was formed 40 years ago to take on operation of the Register from the government under the Register of County Court Judgment Regulations 1985. In that time, the number of judgments, cancellations and satisfactions that we receive from the courts has grown and the landscape has changed. Originally set up by parliament in 1852, the purpose of the Registry was then “to enable parties to ascertain the credit of tradesmen and others whom they might be inclined to trust, by searching to see if there were any judgments registered”.
In 2025, we are eager to see today’s Register change to help address today’s priorities, like financial inclusion, local and regional growth and problems like energy debt. Whilst not a campaign group, we do think our data can help inform public policy priorities, and making relatively small changes to the way regulated firms treat CCJs could help protect people in financial difficulty.
We currently have three initiatives that we believe could bring the Register up-to-date and enhance the utility of the data we hold for policymakers, regulators, civil society and industry. These are to include the name of the claimant on the Register for England and Wales (by far the largest jurisdiction); address the problem of county court judgments (CCJs) not being marked as ‘satisfied’ on the public registers; and to create a partial settlements register.
The government will shortly introduce secondary legislation to include claimant names although whilst a welcome step in the right direction, it will not currently extend beyond the owner’ of the debt so where debts have been passed on, the original claimant will not be visible.
We welcome thoughts on these initiatives from regulators like Ofgem and other interested parties and look forward to working across sectors in our 40th anniversary year.