Dear colleagues,





I wrote, enquiring how  library services deal with customers who fail to

return stock, beyond standard overdue letters, and said I would summarise

responses for the list.



Currently, St Helens Libraries pursues customers with non-returned loans

through a legal process including county court action, if the value of the

non-returned stock and fines owing exceeds £50.  Our authority cumulates

all debts owing, across all services, and prosecutes if more than £100 is

owed.  We are not comfortable with this, for a number of reasons, and we

are writing a report that , if accepted, will completely overhaul all our

membership requirements and treatment of defaulters.



Many thanks to colleagues who responded to my email and to our phone calls

- we greatly appreciate your sharing with us (and with the list).





Summary



There were four replies.

·     Three library services do not take customers to court

·     One does in certain circumstances.

·     One council doesn’t take debtors to court for anything, including

council Tax.

·     One respondent enquired about a private sector company, Unique

Management Services.  A Google search reveals little about them, but they

have worked with Greenwich Libraries, according to a summary of a

conference in 2008.



In addition, we phoned around and spoke to a number of library services.

Most were no longer pursuing their customers through the courts, and in

many cases were using pre-overdues, whether posted, texted or emailed, to

improve customer care and reduce the number of overdues required.



So it seems that court action for non-returned library stock is becoming

the minority option amongst UK public library services, based on the

evidence of this admittedly small sample.







Further details



1.    A London borough We don't take people to court - haven't done so for

about 15 years when our legal service began to charge us so much it was

counterproductive; also huge amount of paperwork for very little return.

Currently we have no formal legal mechanism for pursuing defaulters other

than the usual notices.



2.    A Scottish authority  We've never taken customers to court for non

returned items.  I suspect out return rate is similar to those who do take

customers to court but obviously don't have any figures to back that up.



3.    Another Scottish authority Currently, we have no means of pursuing

non-returned loans beyond three overdue letters and a final bill issued by

post.  The final bill contains the threat of legal action, which the

population are unaware, will simply never materialise.



The council does not pursue any debts through the courts, including council

tax.  As such, we have no mechanism to pursue library debts in this way.



I am however looking forward to your summarised comments on the list, since

I'm keen to explore other avenues.  I'm already aware that Unique

Management Services offer a 'gentle nudge' approach, specifically for

library services.  They seem to guarantee that the income they generate

will at a minimum pay for their services.  I'm hoping that someone using

them already might respond to your email.



4.    An English shire county  [After a series of overdue reminders]

Anything over £50 in value (replacement costs and charges) is referred to

our admin team. An invoice is issued via the [council’s] management system.

Reminders on this are issued if there has been no response after 14 days.



If this still doesn't get a response all cases are referred to our legal

services team who issue a letter advising the customer of potential legal

action.



Cases where the debt is £150+ will be considered as a debt claim case. This

basically invites the borrower into court to agree how the debt will be

cleared (including deductions from benefits etc where appropriate).

Prosecution is rare.



We put a higher ceiling on those cases that are referred to court to ensure

we don't incur any unnecessary costs.We used to use a debt collector but

this became increasingly less successful. We are also prepared to negotiate

payment by instalments; agree a full and final payment (anything from

30%-70% of the full debt); and we are currently investigating how we

respond to those with mental health issues who can become 'serial' debtors.



We don't encourage staff to spend large amounts of time undertaking

shelfchecks or ringing borrowers. Most people who genuinely forget will

respond to the notice. Recovery rates drop considerably once a recovery

process has been triggered - so we only invest in the most significant

cases.  Pre-overdue notices issued to a customer before their books are due

back have been used by our partner library services … . This has been a

good customer care development but there is no clear evidence as yet to

identify whether there has been an impact on income levels.







I hope this is useful to others– if anyone reading this wishes to add

further information about their procedures, what’s worked for them, I would

be happy to update this summary.



Regards,







Keith Patterson



Operations Manager

Libraries Management Team

Chester Lane Library

Four Acre Lane

St Helens WA9 4DE

tel:   (01744) 677487

fax:  (01744) 677082