I had seen that post Zoe, and indeed Malcolm Brown did contact me at the beginning of this week to apologise for circulating my clients. To date, I have still not recieved a copy of the letter he intends to send my clients by way of rectification, and I will chase this up next week before I make any further postings on that site.
In fairness to all concerned, if people have genuinely entered into IVA proceedings without having proper advice from either the debt consultant who initially spoke to them, or the eventual IP to whom they were referred, this could constitute bad or inappropriate advice.
I scan a lot of the debt forums quite frequently, but only post on this one, and they are littered with complaints from people who claim to have been pushed into an IVA by an unscrupulous practitioner or company - but these claims will be very difficult to prove and I am not sure they will be supported by the regulatory bodies who licence IPs. Individuals must also take some responsibility for their destiny.
I have not agreed to "host" a column on the IVAC site, but am very happy to put my point of view across as to what constitues best advice - and the options which are available to clients in financial difficulty. This is largely covered by Statement of Insolvency Practice No 3, and is very clear. IPs who fail to heed the statutory provisions (if any actually do!), leave themselves wide open to criticism, however I feel that if there is a problem it lies within the marketing arms or companies who supply cases to IPs rather than the other way round, and the Advertising Standards agency stepped on that at the beginning of this year to stop inappropriate advertising and marketing.
It will be interesting to see how the proposed litigation develops, if at all, but until I am persuaded otherwise, if the IVAC are genuinely offering a councelling service for misled debtors, I have no problem in drawing their details to the attention of those parties.
Regards, Melanie Giles, Insolvency Practitioner for over 20 years.
To have me propose an IVA for you, please visit:
http://www.melaniegiles.com/ivaEnquiry.asp
See customer feedback at:
http://www.iva.com/iva_companies/IVA_Advice_Bureau.asp
