Claiming Against a Bailiff: Paragraph 66 Remedies and Compensation

The statutory basis is paragraph 66 of Schedule 12 to the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007. It is short, it is specific, and it contains two limits that most descriptions of it leave out. Reading it properly is the difference between a claim worth bringing and a claim that will fail whatever the agent did.

If what you want is an apology, a fee reversed or the case pulled back from the enforcement firm, the complaints route will usually get you there faster and at no risk. Come here when a complaint has not produced a remedy that matches the loss, or when the loss is large enough that only a court order will do.

What paragraph 66 covers

The paragraph is triggered in two situations. It applies where an enforcement agent "breaches a provision of this Schedule", or where the agent "acts under an enforcement power under a writ, warrant, liability order or other instrument that is defective".

Those are genuinely different. The first is about conduct: something Schedule 12 does not permit was done, whether that is entering in a way the Schedule does not allow, taking goods it protects, or taking a further step after the power had ended. The second is about paperwork: the liability order, warrant, writ or judgment behind the enforcement was itself defective, in which case what the agent did on the day may have been faultless and the claim still works.

The second limb is the one people miss, and it is the reason the underlying documents are worth obtaining before anything else. If the instrument was bad, the enforcement carried out under it is caught by paragraph 66 regardless of how politely it was carried out.

What a court can order

Where the paragraph applies, "the court may order goods to be returned to the debtor" and may "order the enforcement agent or a related party to pay damages in respect of loss suffered by the debtor as a result of the breach or of anything done under the defective instrument".

A related party is defined in the paragraph itself as either the person on whom the enforcement power is conferred or the creditor. In practice that means a claim is not confined to the individual agent or the firm that employed them: the council, the court service or the business that instructed the enforcement can be the party ordered to pay. Where the agent is a small subcontractor and the creditor is a local authority, that matters a great deal.

The paragraph also states expressly that its remedies are "without prejudice to any other powers of the court", so it sits alongside rather than replacing anything else a court could do.

The two limits that decide most cases

A breach does not make the agent a trespasser. Paragraph 66 says in terms that "the breach or defect does not make the enforcement agent, or a person he is acting for, a trespasser". Before 2014 an enforcement that went wrong could make the whole visit unlawful from the beginning. That is no longer the position. You are claiming for the consequences of the specific thing done wrong, not for the visit as a whole.

Reasonable belief is a defence to damages. The damages limb "does not apply where the enforcement agent acted in the reasonable belief that he was not breaching a provision of this Schedule, or, as the case may be, that the instrument was not defective". Note the shape of this: it removes damages, not the order for the return of goods. An agent who genuinely and reasonably believed a warrant was valid can still be ordered to hand back what was taken while not being ordered to pay for it.

There is a further narrowing where the complaint is that enforcement continued after the debt was cleared. Paragraph 66 is subject to paragraph 59, under which the agent "is not liable unless he had notice, when the step was taken, that the amount outstanding had been paid in full". Notice there includes what the person would have found out on reasonable enquiry, which is why the date and method of your final payment, and any confirmation of it, are worth documenting carefully.

Where the claim is brought

Paragraph 66 sets out where proceedings go: the High Court for an enforcement power under a High Court writ, the county court for a power under a county court warrant, and either court in any other case. Council tax, business rates and traffic penalty enforcement fall into that last category, so the county court is the practical venue.

A money claim of this size is normally allocated to the small claims track, which is the normal track for a claim valued at no more than £10,000. That keeps costs risk low and hearings informal, but it also means the court will expect the loss to be evidenced with documents rather than described.

What the loss actually consists of

Damages under paragraph 66 are for loss suffered as a result of the breach. That is narrower than a sense of how badly the experience went, and it is worth being blunt about what tends to be recoverable.

Distress and inconvenience are harder. Paragraph 66 speaks of loss, and courts award modest sums for non-financial harm in claims of this kind rather than the figures people sometimes expect. Anyone promising a large payout for the upset alone is selling something.

The practical route

Get the documents first. Ask the enforcement firm for the notice of enforcement, the inventory, the controlled goods agreement, the fee breakdown and the valuation. Ask the creditor for the liability order, warrant or judgment. Most claims are won or lost on whether these documents match what the regulations require.

Send a letter before action. The Practice Direction on pre-action conduct expects a claimant to write to the defendant with "concise details of the claim", including the basis on which the claim is made, a summary of the facts and what is wanted, and expects a response "within a reasonable time", described as 14 days in a straightforward case. Courts take non-compliance into account when giving directions and when making costs orders, so this step is not optional politeness.

Set out the loss as figures. One line per item, with the document that proves it. A schedule of loss is more persuasive than any amount of narrative.

Say what you want. Return of specific goods, a stated sum, or both.

Do not delay. Claims of this kind are subject to a limitation period, and separately the evidence decays: photographs get deleted, firms cycle their records, and memories of who said what at the door blur. Take advice on timing early rather than assuming there is plenty of it.

Routes that are not paragraph 66

Three things are often filed under compensation and are actually separate remedies with easier procedures.

Fees charged wrongly are dealt with by the court determining the dispute on an application under the fees regulations, rather than by a damages claim. That is a cheaper and more targeted route and it is covered on challenging bailiff fees; the underlying figures are on bailiff fees.

Goods belonging to somebody else are recovered by the third party, not by the debtor, under a claim to controlled goods with a seven day notice requirement. See third party goods claims.

Conduct that breaches the national standards but not the Schedule is a complaint, not a claim. Rudeness, pressure and poor communication are real and worth raising, but they do not by themselves engage paragraph 66.

Being realistic about outcomes

Most enforcement that feels unlawful turns out, on the documents, to have been within the rules but badly handled. That is a complaint. A minority is a genuine breach with a modest measurable loss, and there the usual outcome is the fee or the goods restored plus a small sum, often agreed before any hearing once the schedule of loss lands. A small number involve significant loss, a defective instrument or goods sold at a fraction of their worth, and those are the ones worth taking proper legal advice on rather than running alone.

None of that is a reason not to pursue a claim that is properly founded. It is a reason to build it on documents and figures rather than on the strength of feeling, because that is what the court will be looking at. If the wider problem is that the debt itself is unaffordable, deal with that alongside the claim rather than after it, and get in touch.