The new bailiff regulations came into effect on 6th April and there is now specific reference in the new regulations regarding the procedure for making a complaint to the court regarding the conduct of a bailiff. Most significantly, it now provides that a court can impose a costs order against the complainant if it is satisfied that the complaint:
"disclosing no reasonable grounds for considering that the certificated person is not a fit person to hold a certificate"
or:
"amounts to an abuse of the court's process"
From information that I have received in the past week or so it would seem that since April complaints to the court about bailiffs have completely dried up and whether this is to do with fees scale now being transparent we do not know.
Unfortunately, with court delays there are still a fair number of 'Form 4' Complaints that are still being heard in court under the old regulations and within one week we received reports of four cases where courts had dismissed 'Form 4' Complaints and ordered costs to be paid by the debtor.
The latest one was just this morning when we received a copy of a judgment where His Honour Judge Wilding considered a Form 4 from November 2013 and dismissed the application and ordered the complaints to pay the sum of £2,934 by 4pm on 22nd September 2014.