A fifth of England's bailiffs were certificated at one County Court
Every certificate to take control of goods is granted by a named judge at a named court. Of 1,211 on the register, 254 were granted at Dartford. The court on a bailiff's certificate says more about their employer than about where they work.
By Rose Traviss · 27 September 2026
An enforcement agent cannot use the Taking Control of Goods procedure without a certificate, and a certificate is granted by a judge in a named County Court after being satisfied that the applicant is a fit and proper person. The certificate lasts two years and must be applied for again.
HM Courts & Tribunals Service publishes all of this — the agent, the employer, the court, the date granted and the date it expires — which makes the certificated enforcement agent register the only public register of a legal occupation in England and Wales that names a court at all. Not the Bar’s, not the solicitors’, not the notaries’.
So it can be asked a question no other register can: where do bailiffs get certificated?
Not evenly
Of the 1,211 certificates collected, 254 were granted at Dartford County Court — 21% of the register, at one court, from 49 different employers. Worcester Combined Court granted 135 and Liverpool Civil and Family Court 119. The ten busiest courts between them account for 915 certificates, 75.6% of the total, out of 27 courts appearing in the register at all.
| Court | Certificates | Employers |
|---|---|---|
| Dartford County Court | 254 | 49 |
| Worcester Combined Court | 135 | 17 |
| Liverpool Civil and Family Court | 119 | 18 |
| Northampton Combined Court | 79 | 22 |
| Hertford County Court | 78 | 18 |
| Burnley Combined Court Centre | 70 | 18 |
| Brighton County Court | 58 | 24 |
| Central London County Court | 51 | 18 |
| Birmingham Civil Justice Centre | 38 | 16 |
| Nottingham County Court | 33 | 14 |
What the concentration is, and is not
It is tempting to read this as a map of where bailiffs work. It is not. An application is made to a convenient court, and for a national enforcement company the convenient court is the one near its own office or the one it has always used, not the one near the debtor.
The employer figures make that concrete. Bristow & Sutor has 84 agents on the register and used two courts between them. Marston Holdings, the largest employer with 242, used 23. Somebody certificated at Dartford may spend their entire working life in Cumbria.
| Employer | Agents | Courts used |
|---|---|---|
| Marston Holdings | 242 | 23 |
| self employed | 181 | 23 |
| CDER Group | 111 | 21 |
| Bristow & Sutor | 84 | 2 |
| Newlyn plc | 55 | 11 |
The second row is the one to sit with. “Self employed” is the second-largest employer of certificated enforcement agents in England and Wales, with 181 of 1,211 certificates — more than CDER Group, which holds one of the three national Approved Enforcement Agency contracts. These are individuals who hold their own certificate and answer to no company’s compliance function. The register records them, and records nothing else about them.
Certificate terms
Regulation 9 of the Certification of Enforcement Agents Regulations 2014 gives a certificate a two-year life, and the register bears that out: 1,152 of the 1,211 run between 728 and 731 days, which is two years however the leap day falls. Forty-six are shorter and thirteen are longer. The shortest runs 592 days.
The register does not say why, and this piece does not guess. An early renewal dated from the old expiry would produce a short term; so would a condition imposed by the judge; the register shows neither.
The number is a floor
1,211 is not the size of the profession. It is what could be collected, and the register makes collection hard in a way worth recording.
Its search matches whole words only. “Smith” finds Smith, Brown-Smith and Pearson-Smith; “smi” finds nobody. There is no wildcard, no browse-all page and no download, so the register cannot be read in alphabetical order — it can only be interrogated with words you already know. The method used here is described on methodology: seed with the enforcement companies the register’s own homepage names and the commonest British surnames, then follow every name and employer found to the next query.
It stops short of complete for two reasons. An agent whose forename, surname and every word of whose employer are unique to them in the register is unreachable by this method. And the service itself stops answering: at two seconds between requests it began returning 429, and after about 750 requests it escalated to 403 and refused this client altogether. It was serving normally again within the hour, so it is rate limiting with a temper rather than a ban — but it means the register cannot be read in one pass, and nothing here tries.
Source: the Certificated Enforcement Agent Register, HM Courts & Tribunals Service, collected 27 September 2026. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. It is the only openly licensed register on this site.