As part of his ongoing knowledge exchange activities and continuous engagement with government, industry, and third sector stakeholders, Dr Joseph Spooner recently contributed expertise to the UK Insolvency Service’s Personal Insolvency Review. Dr Spooner acted as independent academic chair of a series of stakeholder workshops and has published a report of the workshop proceedings.
The Insolvency Service is an executive agency with responsibility for oversight and administration of the insolvency system, which is sponsored within government by the Department for Business and Trade. Over recent years, the Insolvency Service has been conducting the most significant review of personal insolvency policy in forty years - the Personal Insolvency Review. This ongoing project has included the publication of a Call for Evidencein July 2022, followed in August 2023 by a Summary of Responses and Next Steps. With support from the LSE Law School, Dr Spooner has previously contributed to both the Call for Evidence and the Insolvency Service’s work subsequent to this Call.
A first aspect of these Next Steps included considering ‘whether there is scope to improve the debt relief landscape through non legislative means or secondary legislation’. Accordingly, the Spring Budget 2024 saw initial reforms to expand access to the important protections offered to lower-income households by the Debt Relief Order (DRO) procedure. In prior published research, including his monograph arguing for recognising bankruptcy as an important insurance mechanism of last resort in a debt-fuelled economy, Dr Spooner has previously presented the case for significant expansion of the Debt Relief Order procedure.
The Insolvency Service identified the second strand of these Next Steps as involving ‘work with stakeholders and other interested parties to develop proposals for reform for further public consultation’. As part of this work, Dr Spooner was asked to chair a series of stakeholder workshops on the theme of ‘Routes into Insolvency’. Dr Spooner chaired meetings of stakeholders, including participants drawn from public bodies/government, NGOs, practitioners, professional associations, and the credit industry. Dr Spooner then wrote a report presenting his own assessment and summary, as chair of the workshop, of the discussions held over the course of the meetings. The report communicates stakeholder views in the context of existing research literature and policy perspectives, in a manner that will inform future Insolvency Service proposals for reform.
Routes into Insolvency – A Report for the Personal Insolvency Review can be accessed here: https://www.lse.ac.uk/law/Assets/Documents/joseph-spooner/2024-Spooner-Routes-into-Insolvency-A-Report-for-the-Personal-Insolvency-Review.pdf
You can find out more about Dr Spooner’s research through LSE podcasts and blogs.