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Warning: housing bubble risks a personal debt explosion

The governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, is clearly intent on keeping interest rates at their current low of 0.5% for as long as possible. Waiting until unemployment drops below 7% may delay an increase until 2016 or, at the market-predicted earliest, the first quarter of 2015. That’s good news for house buyers and some reassurance to people using individual voluntary arrangements or debt management plans to
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A bad press for councils – and bailiffs – is undeserved

Local authorities get a bad press these days and the latest example was the news last week that councils had referred 1.8 million debts to bailiffs in the last 12 months. The figures were gathered using Freedom of Information requests to all 374 local authorities in England and Wales by the Money Advice Trust, a charity formed in 1991 to help people ‘tackle their debts and manage their money wisely’. The trust said t
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Chasing debt? There are limitations

One of the first questions I ask a new client asking for help in chasing an unpaid account is, how old is the debt? That’s because the law, specifically the Limitation Act 1980, sets time limits for starting court proceedings for recovery of the amount owed. The account becomes ‘statute barred’ in legal jargon. That does not mean the debt is wiped out, but we’ll come back to that. For unsecured debt, the law is reaso
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Be prepared is a useful motto for landlords too

Watching the BBC documentary last week called Meet the Landlords was probably frustrating for anyone in my line of business, though it looks as though there’ll be no shortage of debt collection work in the future. The old boy scout motto, Be Prepared, is just as important for anyone considering letting out residential property. From the stories told in the programme it was clear that some owners have not been doing t
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Face to face meetings make business personal again

  Once upon a time your bank manager would, according to the television ad by the London clearing banks, pop out of a cupboard under the stairs to lend a financial helping hand. At the time the high street banks had a gentleman’s agreement not to advertise individually on TV, but wanted more people to open current accounts boasting such innovations  as cheque guarantee cards. Obtaining a bank loan depended then
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Insolvency – a to-do guide for company directors

In the first quarter of 2013 there were 3,619 company liquidations in England, according to the latest figures from the government’s Insolvency Service. That’s 5.3% fewer than in the previous quarter, 15.8% fewer than in the same period of 2012 and about the same position as in 2005. These figures exclude businesses that closed without entering a formal insolvency regime and where debts were too small or too few for
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Mediation

Why you have to consider mediation Mediation is a buzzword in legal circles. You might think it only applies to squabbling couples heading for a divorce, but it can be a flexible, fast and cost-effective means for businesses to resolve disputes. Making a court claim for money owed can be known as taking someone to the “small claims court”.  But you might not have to appear before a judge to prove your claim. “Courts
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