What Bailiffs Can and Cannot Do: Conduct and Visiting Hours

This page sets out the hours an agent may visit, what the Ministry of Justice's national standards expect of them, what they must give you before a visit, and what to do if the conduct falls short. It does not repeat the detailed force-entry rules or the vulnerability rules in full: those have their own pages, linked below, because each carries enough detail to need one.

The hours a bailiff may visit

An enforcement agent may not take control of goods before 6am or after 9pm on any day.

That is a fixed statutory limit, not a guideline, and it applies whatever the debt is, council tax, a parking penalty, a County Court judgment or a High Court writ. There is no general rule banning weekend attendance: a visit on a Saturday or Sunday between 6am and 9pm is not unlawful on that basis alone.

If an agent attends outside those hours, note the time, because it is a straightforward, checkable failure to raise in a complaint.

What the notice rules require before anyone visits

Timing at the door is only half the picture. An agent must also have given you a Notice of Enforcement at least 14 clear days before taking control of goods, setting out the debt, the amount, the deadline to pay and how to get in touch.

The notice must also tell you about the availability of free debt advice, and that a debt advice provider can request the period be extended to 28 clear days, unless the debt is a non-eligible business debt.

An agent turning up without that notice having been properly given first is a procedural failure worth raising immediately. See Notice of Enforcement for what it must contain, how it must be delivered and how the clear-days calculation works.

What the national standards expect

The Ministry of Justice's national standards for taking control of goods set out how creditors and enforcement agents are expected to behave, even though the standards themselves are guidance rather than law.

Creditors are expected to act proportionately, taking a debtor's circumstances into account. Agents are expected to be trained to recognise vulnerability, to alert the creditor where they identify it, and to know when to withdraw from a case rather than continue. Where someone is identified as vulnerable, creditors should be prepared to take control of the case back from the agent at any time, if that is what the situation needs.

The standards also expect that a debtor should be able to find out easily how to complain, and that nothing should be placed in the way of doing so.

None of that removes the debt or guarantees a particular outcome, but it does set out what "acting properly" is measured against. If your circumstances make the standard visit unworkable, illness, disability, bereavement, pregnancy, age-related difficulty, or a language or literacy barrier are among the situations that can be relevant, say so in writing to the agent and the creditor as early as possible. See how bailiffs should treat you if you're vulnerable for what should follow once that has been raised.

Body-worn video and the recording of a visit

The Ministry of Justice's standards were written in 2014 and say nothing at all about cameras. The Enforcement Conduct Board's standards, which took effect in January 2025 for the firms it accredits, do. An enforcement agent is expected to wear a working body-worn video camera on an enforcement visit and to record their dealings with anyone present, so far as that is necessary and proportionate. The board also expects the agent to explain early in the visit that recording is happening, and that it is there to provide evidence of what passed between you if a complaint or a dispute follows.

Firms are expected to hold a written policy on how the camera is used, to keep the footage centrally rather than leaving it on the agent's device, to review it, and to set out in that policy how their agents answer a request for it. Where footage is relevant to a complaint, the standards expect it to be kept for at least 12 months from the date of the complaint.

So ask, and ask early. Write to the firm with the date, time and address of the visit and your case reference, and request the body-worn video for that attendance. Footage of you is your own personal data, so you can also ask for a copy under the right of access, and an organisation usually has a month to reply. Pointing a complaint at the firm's own recording changes it from your word against the agent's into something the firm can check for itself.

What an agent may not do

Take goods that are not the debtor's. An enforcement agent may take control only of goods belonging to the person named on the warrant or liability order, not a partner's, a lodger's or an employer's property.

Force entry to a home on a first visit, for most debts. For council tax, parking penalties, County Court judgments and most other civil debts, an agent may not force their way in on a first visit, and entry must be peaceable. That changes mainly where goods were already taken into control under a controlled goods agreement that was later broken. See can bailiffs force entry for the full set of exceptions.

Charge fees outside the statutory scale. The fee stages are fixed by regulation and identical whichever firm is instructed, currently £79 at the compliance stage, £247 at the enforcement stage plus 7.5% of any sum above £1,900, and £116 at the sale stage plus the same percentage. See bailiff fees for the full scale and how it applies when several debts are enforced together.

Ignore a controlled goods agreement you are keeping to. An agreement that is being paid as agreed should not, in itself, generate further visits about the same debt. See controlled goods agreement for what the agreement does and does not permit.

How to complain

Name the specific rule you say was broken, rather than a general complaint that the visit was unpleasant. Wrong hours, no notice given, goods listed that were not the debtor's, a fee outside the statutory scale, each of those is a checkable failure, and a complaint that names one is answered very differently from one that simply objects to being visited at all.

Keep dates, times, names and any paperwork handed over or pushed through the door. A complaint about conduct is a separate matter from disputing whether the underlying debt is owed, and the two are best pursued through their own routes rather than combined into one letter.

For the full escalation route, the enforcement firm, the creditor who instructed it, and the independent bodies that sit above both, see how to complain about a bailiff.