Do the right thing, Adviser's and creditors experience of best practice ...

Step 4Access to account informationIf customers can see their debt going down, it willencourage them to keep up payments. Creditorsshould keep the cost of debt down by freezingcharges and interest and provide people with easyaccess to their account balance, as well as anystatutory notices or statements. If there are anydiscrepancies or queries, the person or their advisershould be able to contact a member of staff who issufficiently empowered to take action and resolveany problems. Incentives to maintaining paymentIncentives, such as Wessex Water’s Restart scheme,can also help people keep up payment. On theRestart scheme a person’s payments in year one arematched by Wessex Water. Then, if payments aremaintained at the end of year two the rest of thearrears are written off. Support for advice agenciesAdvisers are generally more knowledgeable aboutdebt related issues than their clients. When theycontact a person’s creditors, they are usually tryingto resolve a complex problem. If advisers have touse public phone lines, or write to mainstreamcollections teams, it can waste their time and thatof the creditor, if the people they reach simply can’thelp. Having dedicated contact points that arestaffed by people who can enact any and all of thecreditor’s policies helps advisers resolve mattersmore quickly. Such contact points should beavailable to all advice providers, as with the AdviceAgency Support Unit at Wescot Credit Services. Support for people in debtPeople in debt might occasionally miss paymentsfor a range of reasons – a washing machine mightneed repairing or benefits may have been stoppedwith little or no warning. Creditors should take apragmatic approach to such occasional paymentproblems and look at each case individually, anddo what they can to help their customer recover.For example, they might allow the person tomake up payments later, or miss a payment,or even extend the repayment period. 18