As the 2026 local elections approach, Debt Justice — formerly known as the Jubilee Debt Campaign — is putting a specific and practical challenge to every candidate standing for a council seat: will you commit to ending the use of private bailiffs to collect council tax debt?

The briefing makes for sobering reading. Council tax debt across the UK has reached £8.3 billion, and the use of bailiffs — who can charge additional fees that push already-struggling households deeper into crisis — remains standard practice in many local authorities. Yet the evidence shows that fairer collection approaches, used by some councils, achieve comparable collection rates without the trauma and financial harm that bailiff enforcement inflicts.

This is exactly the kind of granular, evidence-based advocacy that the Christian debt justice tradition has always been good at. The Jubilee principle — that debt should not be allowed to trap people in permanent poverty — finds its contemporary expression in campaigns like this one, which ask not for charity but for structural change.

With local elections on the horizon, this briefing is a practical tool for any Christian who wants to engage their local candidates on issues of economic justice. The question is simple: will you protect the most vulnerable residents in your area from a system that too often makes poverty worse?