It’s a November morning in Southmead. Sharon Hudd, a single mum who cares for disabled kids, is leaving for work. But then she sees her car is clamped. 

“I went into blind panic – I needed to get to work,” Sharon tells me. She calls Marstons, the bailiff firm that has clamped her car, and is told she must pay £565 within the hour. She tearfully explains she can only afford £100 right now, and is told: “I’m not your support worker. Pay, or we’ll take the car away.”

Sharon puts the phone down, in tears, and calls her dad, who lends her the money. She pays the debt online, her car is unclamped, and she gets to work. 

Next day, she’s feeling so paranoid she parks her car around the corner before going away for a few days. When she returns, there’s a sticker on its window. “I thought: ‘I can’t cope, I’m going to have a breakdown if this has happened again.” 

It has. There are more fines in her name and this time they’re demanding £1,700. Panicked and upset, Sharon calls ACORN’s Bristol organiser Sam Kidel, who offers to come down with a few people. 

Kidel calls the council, who say Sharon has five unpaid penalty charge notices (PCNs), often issued for things like parking or not paying CAZ charges. When informed she’s willing to set up a payment plan, the council says it will put the debt enforcement on hold and order Marstons to unclamp Sharon’s car. But despite numerous calls and texts to the bailiffs, they don’t show and Sharon’s car isn’t released until the next morning. 

“I was unbelievably stressed,” Sharon remembers. “I didn’t have any money.” The stress makes her ill and she goes to hospital with pneumonia and is signed off sick for a month, falling behind on rent because she’s living off statutory sick pay. “I was getting letters about rent arrears from the council – who caused the problem in the first place.” 

As Sharon hadn’t heard about the PCNs until the bailiff visit, she can appeal the fines. Sharon has ended up in hospital, but for now at least, she’s kept the bailiffs at bay. 

A so-called ethical approach

None of this should have happened. In 2018, Bristol City Council committed to piloting a new ethical debt collection policy after our campaign uncovered thousands of Bristolians being hounded by council-sent bailiffs.

The policy promised bailiffs would be a last resort, for people who could pay and hadn’t. But as the Cable reported last year, thousands of council tax debts are still being sent to bailiffs after debt collection was restarted post-pandemic.

The council previously told us this number should fall as the pandemic arrears backlog gradually cleared. But new data obtained under freedom of information laws shows 5,237 council tax debts were sent by the council to enforcement agents between July and September 2024. This is lower than the 8,293 in the same period in 2023, but is still the second highest of any quarter since post-pandemic collection restarted: an average of 57 daily. 

Chantelle, another Bristolian visited by bailiffs, had her debt taken back in-house after contacting ACORN. Chris had to pay nearly £300 for a CAZ fine he never received, including bailiff fees. And, as previously reported, Jack had to deal with intimidating calls from bailiffs years after he’d moved from Bristol because his housemate had been pocketing the cash instead of paying the council tax. The council sent 37,541 CAZ PCNs to bailiffs in 2023, but didn’t provide figures for 2024.

According to the council’s debt-collection policy, if someone repeatedly misses payments and warning notices without proving financial hardship or other vulnerabilities, they can be taken to court for a liability order. This could lead to enforcement action. Crucially, though, the policy says the council will assess what they can afford and any vulnerabilities they might have, and set up an affordable repayment plan.

But clearly this isn’t always happening.

Is vulnerability being taken into account?

It’s now March 2025, and Sharon is waiting to hear from the council about her appeals. She has provided a vulnerability letter and requested a repayment plan, after being offered a refund of the original bailiff fees in December, and said she would get clear details of all original PCN debts.

Despite this, a Marstons bailiff comes and clamps her car again, telling her she’s missed a deadline and must pay £1,400. “I told him I would pay everything to the council but not a penny to Marstons.” He threatens to take her car if she doesn’t pay and adds another £100 to her debt. 

My daughter won’t stay downstairs now if I’m not there… Every time there’s a knock at the door she thinks it’s a bailiff.

Sharon Hudd

After the tense standoff, Sharon calls the council and finds out the enforcement activity had been restarted because it hadn’t received her PCN appeals. But the advisor acknowledges she’d sent evidence of being ill, and says they’ll call the bailiffs off again. 

Sharon sends yet more evidence to the council. A month later, she gets a brief reply dismissing her complaints. “It was really obvious from their reply that they hadn’t even read it properly.” 

ACORN helps her send another letter to the council demanding an update on her PCN appeals, a detailed breakdown of all the fines she owes, the refund of the £575 she’d paid in November and confirmation that her complaint would be properly reviewed. At the time of writing the council is yet to respond. 

“My daughter won’t stay downstairs now if I’m not there,” Sharon says. “Every time there’s a knock at the door she thinks it’s a bailiff”.

Sharon also talks about how the ordeal transports her back to a past abusive relationship. “When [the bailiff] was shouting down the phone at me, I was taken straight back to it (…) it was really horrible.”

In response to our FOI request, the council said it doesn’t have strict criteria for assessing vulnerability and doesn’t track how many council tax debts are taken back in-house from bailiffs due to vulnerability.

Kidel says Sharon’s experience is “appalling but not unusual”. 

“The council has sent bailiffs to tens of thousands of Bristolian households in the last year and our members have regularly reported that they’ve charged illegitimate fees, refused to accept their responsibilities to recognise people’s vulnerabilities, and acted like aggressive bullies. 

“All the cases we’ve taken on have involved vulnerable people and the individual bailiff has completely ignored them when they’ve said they’re vulnerable.”

He adds that bailiffs have regularly refused to allow people to set up payment plans, which goes against the council’s policy. ACORN launched a campaign, demanding the council stop using bailiffs to collect debts from people on benefits or low incomes and stop using them entirely for council tax debt. 

Time for action

Sharon joins ACORN organisers at a meeting with senior councillors at City Hall in late March, not long after this latest bailiff visit.

“I’ve never done anything like that before,” Sharon says. “I was ready for it, I felt strong going into it. I did end up crying which I didn’t want to do, but you can’t control your emotions – unless you’re a bailiff, obviously! But they needed to know how wrong this is.”

Deputy council leader Heather Mack and Green group leader Emma Edwards were there. “I was looking straight at them, I could see the same emotion in their eyes,” Sharon remembers. “They said they didn’t think this sort of thing was happening now and that they’d look into it.” 

ACORN shared evidence of Bristow & Sutor and Marstons ignoring vulnerability and requests for repayment plans, which goes against the council’s policy that bailiffs ‘should accept payment plans wherever possible’.

Following evidence shared by ACORN, the council has already stopped working with another bailiff company, Able Enforcement, which typically does evictions. Then, a month later, the council agreed to a meeting with ACORN, but did not respond directly to their other demands. 

Concrete commitment still needed

The Cable sent detailed questions about the findings of this article to the council. In response, councillor Heather Mack, said: “I have met with ACORN to learn about their campaign and am now working to establish how the council’s debt recovery processes operate and the effectiveness of communication between the council and those who owe monies.

“The outcomes of this fact-finding will inform further discussions with ACORN and other interested groups on the topic of how the council recovers debt,” she added.

“I thank ACORN for their work on this subject, and can see that this issue impacts many across the council and although we have an ethical debt recovery policy, there’s still work to be done to protect those most vulnerable in our city.”

ACORN Bristol branch secretary Wesley Bear said: “It is unacceptable that after five months, council leaders have still not made a concrete commitment to reducing the use of bailiffs. 

I’m not your support worker. You need to pay or we’ll take the car away.

A Marstons bailiff

“While we recognise that some limited steps have been taken in response to our demands, the council has failed to address the central issue: council-contracted bailiffs continue to intimidate low-income and vulnerable residents,” he added. 

“Every day, Bristol City Council sends dozens of bailiffs into Bristolian households, and the resulting stress has already caused serious harm to some of our members. The council cannot continue to delay. Vulnerable people in our city deserve better.”

Amid concerns about the effectiveness of Bristol’s policy, the authority that inspired it has recently returned to using bailiffs. In late 2024, Hammersmith and Fulham Council, which provided inspiration for Bristol’s ‘ethical’ approach, announced it would start using bailiffs again in a targeted way, where people who could pay have built up high levels of arrears. 

There have been calls for change at national level, too. Recently, MPs urged the government to introduce an independent regulator for the enforcement sector after research by CItizens Advice in 2023 found that more than one in three people visited by bailiffs had been subjected to behaviour that broke Ministry of Justice rules. This includes bailiffs forcing their way into a home when not allowed, not taking vulnerabilities into account, or taking goods needed for work. 

While she waits for her own case to be resolved, Sharon is determined to speak out. “I think this needs to be spread far and wide. It’s not right. It’s abuse… How do they get away with it?”