Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to his Department’s news story of 5 November 2019, Approved Enforcement Agency Services Contract Awarded, what contingency plans his Department has made to ensure service continuity in the event that any of those contracts so awarded run into financial difficulties.

The Approved Enforcement Agency (AEA) contracts were due to commence on the 1st June 2020. The Department has delayed service commencement from 1st June 2020 to 1st September 2020.

This decision was taken to support the financial position of incoming providers as well as to ensure readiness for service commencement, taking into consideration the restrictions placed upon enforcement activity by the government as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The contracts, and their structure, provide contingency to the Department, by:

• Avoiding reliance on a single service provider
• Introducing a secondary provider for each HMCTS region, that will undertake re-issued warrants of control during normal operation, but is able to step in to the role of the primary provider should they be required to do so
• Including ‘Step-In’ rights across contracts to allow some or all of the work to be transferred between providers
• Requiring service providers to produce and maintain comprehensive Insolvency Plans as part of their Business Continuity Plan. These plans are subject to review and approval by the Department
• Including early warning mechanisms via the contractual obligation to notify the Department of financial distress events and the monitoring of defined financial indicators
• Securing guarantees with the parent company of service providers to provide security in the event of failure and mitigate any cost to the Department