No Andy - although in exceptional circumstances this could be justified. I have dealt with some really complex cases, where I have been running around trying to get accounts to the Revenue, in and out of Court getting Interim Orders and having five or six meetings with the debtor and major creditors whilst dealing with lists of creditors of 50 or more.
There should not be a set fee regime - the one size fits all does not work for professional services and we are not debt collectors but qualified professionals. Try telling a matrimonial lawyer that her fee for getting you access or joint custody of children is limited to £2,000 and how successful do you think she would be - or when would she drop out of the process?
Chris - your point about welcoming a reduction in fees is likely reduce the amount of decent IPs operating in this industry and therefore limit the options available for debtors not increase them.
No-one responding to this post has asked the original poster about the complexity of her case, but made assumptions based upon current press comment and personal experiences.
My original posting was perhaps a little misworded - what I meant to say was that in a one year arrangement we have to do more work in a smaller period than would have been spread over a longer period - so costs in the region of £5,000 for a whole case are not unrealistic - and more imporantly regularly acceptable to creditors. Agreed that £10k appears high - but none of us know the facts of the case.
Regards, Melanie Giles, Insolvency Practitioner for over 20 years.
For further details contact me at
http://www.melaniegiles.com and view my IVA blog at:
http://melaniegiles.blogs.iva.co.uk
