About Us

A specialist in financial, legal & commercial investigations, London House was established in 1995 and now has an extensive national network of over 45 offices in the UK and an agency network throughout Europe and other parts of the world. We provide a comprehensive range of investigative services to a blue chip client base that includes many of the UK and overseas major financial and legal institutions.

We are members of the Credit Services Association, Licensed by the The Office of Fair Trading and Data Protection registered.

London House investigators are highly-trained professionals, experienced within the investigation industry. We work to the highest ethical standards and to our own published Code of Practice

Our Services

Our core business is gathering information and providing comprehensive reports to enable our clients to make decisions based on the most cost-effective actions. Our range of services includes:
*process serving legal documents nationwide including Statutory Demands and Bankruptcy Petitions
*trace enquiries to find absconded debtors, tenants, individuals and businesses
*Commercial debt collection from evasive customers wherever they are in the UK
*Fit to sue Reports - evaluate the chances of success prior to commencing legal proceedings
*Fraud investigations - reduce risk through preventative consultancy
*Tenant screening - cut risk with checks on credit, employment, CCj's and previous landlord reports
*Forensic Drug screening - our drug screening programme can be tailored to your needs to include pre-employment application screening, 'with cause' screening and random screening.
*Surveillance - keep a watchful eye on activities
*Property repossession - we undertake both voluntary and bailiff appointment repossessions. Our services include lock changes, making the property secure and dealing with the utilities, providing full inventory, clearance and security checks.

Your Local Office

The team from Brierley Hill can deal personally with all matters in your local area, including all areas of Stourbridge, Stourpourt On Severn, Dudley, Kidderminster & all areas of Birmingham, Solihull, Redditch, Bromsgrove and Sutton Coldfield.

All of our staff are CRB checked and are experienced investigators with local knowledge.

Focus On...........Customer Interviews

Latest statistics from the financial education charity, Credit Action, show that 1,552 people a day reported that they had been made redundant between May and July 2012 and that £53,706 is the average household debt including mortgages.

The estimated average outstanding mortgage for the 11.2m households that carry mortgage debt stood at £111,793 in August.
The figures also tell us that the CAB are dealing with 8,465 new debt problems each working day, while 93 properties are repossessed each day. Staggeringly, in Q2 2012 UK banks and building societies wrote-off £1.15 billion (of which £567 million was credit card debt) amounting to a daily write-off of £12.52m.

Here at London House we interview many individuals on a daily basis on behalf of our clients in an effort to get their up to date financial position. Wherever possible we meet them at home and complete a detailed income/expenditure/assests/liabilities breakdown. If our client has asked us, we will also negotiate a repayment programme on their behalf within agreed parameters.

Focus On.....Trace and Discreet Investigations

When a client has lost contact with a debtor, we are often asked to trace the debtor's whereabouts and then try and investigate what assets they may have without raising their suspicions.
As you will know, trace is one of our areas of expertise and our managers are highly skilled in field trace work. We often overcome a number of difficulties in locating people who do not want to be found, but we remain determined and our success rate of over 70% confirms our abilities.
When found, we may be asked to investigate the debtor's assets. Obviously, this would normally be their residential property but we also look out for such things as vehicles, other property investments, business interests etc. Where possible we will also seek to gather information from neighbours in an effort to perhaps confirm our thoughts or just provide us with a little snippet of detail. It should be remembered, of course, that there are also occasions when there is no new information or details to find!

Focus On..............Property Visits

We are often asked by our clients to visit a property and provide information relating to it.Typically our clients - banks, solicitors, landlords - ask us to provide a range of information and the purpose of our visit could be to find out any manner of detail. For instance, our clients may ask us to :

1. Confirm the details on an Ordnance Survey Map
2. Report on its condition
3. Confirm what the property is used for
4. Find out who is living/working there (as opposed to tracing somebody)
5. Advise them what is actually on the site
6. Ascertain if the property has been divided into flats
7. Confirm if it is owner occupied or if it has been let/sublet
8. Provide an up to date valuation

Focus On..........Process Serving

As you would expect, we are experienced with High Court, County Court and Magistrates Court and will attend at the address of the subject and personally deliver documents and thereafter swear an appropriate Affidavit of Service. It is our practice to attend at various occasions to effect personal service at no extra charge to our client. We are happy to collect documents from Court or from a client's premises if required.

We have over 45 London House regional offices giving UK-wide coverage. We also operate worldwide through a network of accredited international agents.

An open and shut case !

One of our solicitor clients asked us to attend at a property that they had repossessed using another agent. The property was advertised for sale and the estate agent had visited to make sure everything was okay. He found that his keys would not give him access.It seemed that the doors may have been screwed shut from the inside.The curtains were closed but he thought he saw them "twitch". We were asked to visit and find out what was going on.

On attending at the address we had a look around the front of the property and whilst the curtains were indeed closed, we saw that one of the lower floor windows was closed to but not shut properly or locked. On opening the window and the curtains we found that the living room was full of someone's personal possessions.

We then spoke to a neighbour, who was not aware of the repossession, and told us that the former occupant was still living there. She gave us access through a shared locked gate to the rear we saw that one of the windows had been broken. He had therefore broken back into his former property and was coming and going through the front window, while telling our client he was having to live at a local hotel.

Got You !

Recently one of our managers attempted to serve a Court Order on a debtor in his local area. He met the subject at the address provided by the client a couple of times but he insisted he was not the man we were after and was 'sick to the back teeth of people calling round looking for this bloke ......'. He was not a happy man. Local enquiries suggested it was in fact him but he denied his identity again.

We informed the client and they decided that as there was strong evidence that it was him, our Manager should letterbox the Order. Unsurprisingly he failed to attend the hearing and a Suspended Committal Order was eventually issued and sent to us for serving. We did a little more digging and discovered a website page for the man and, handily, a photo that showed that the man we'd previously met was indeed the right person.

Further enquiries revealed that the debtor was a political party candidate in the local elections being held this month. So our Franchise Owner personally served him at the local polling station!

Priceless.

You asked us.................

"The Council of Mortgage Lenders have released figures showing that the number of repossessions has fallen. Nice to see some positive news!"

Indeed, as recently reported by The BBC, the number of homes being repossessed has fallen to a five year low. The CML reported that there were 8,200 repossessions during the third quarter of 2012 which is the lowest quarterly figure since 2007.

There are, though, some underlying concerns. Whilst the number of borrowers in arrears is stable at 159,100 and the number of repossessions is falling, this is reflective of record low interest rates and lenders showing restraint with those borrowers in difficulty. Lenders have been under pressure not to repossess properties unless it is genuinely a last resort; they also have to jump through many hoops to successfully obtain Court permission to seize a borrower's home.

Long term arrears have risen but Banks won't be able to go on absorbing arrears into their balance sheets indefinitely, and they also have a duty of care to ensure borrowers don't build up too much debt by allowing them to stay in a property if this is unsustainable.

Licensing for Private Investigators

London House Managing Director, Chris Metalle, comments on licensing for private investigating companies.


You will probably have heard on the news this week that several investigations have been launched following the discovery of malpractice amongst a few investigations companies, some of whom had apparently been engaged and instructed by highly reputable law firms. This has led to a commitment from the Home Secretary to bring in licensing for all private investigations companies - a move we not only support but have long campaigned to see introduced.


I am sure you already fully understand that London House ALWAYS carries out its business within the law, abides by our industry's best codes of practice and is fully compliant with all the requirements of a member of the Credit Services Association and a holder of a Consumer Credit Licence from the OFT (soon to be the FCA). Indeed, we can even count the FCA as a client! As you can imagine, we take our responsibilities very seriously and fully train all of our regional managers to a high standard of ethics and field work practices.


It may interest you to know that as the news broke yesterday ITN approached us seeking an interview with a company recognised as operating at the right end of the spectrum albeit this interview then didn't take place, I assume because other news items pushed the story further down the day's news agenda. Nevertheless, I think it is a measure of our reputation that we were selected as an appropriate commentator on this news.


I wanted to take the opportunity to reiterate to you that an instruction sent to London House will always be carried out with the utmost care & diligence but also with integrity and in compliance with the law and best practice. We understand the impact any rogue action by our industry can have not only on the perpetrator but also on you, our client.