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Minutes from the 302nd meeting of The General Consumer Council for Northern Ireland on Friday 22 May 2020.

The Consumer Council’s Home Energy Index tracks changes in household gas, electricity and home heating oil (HHO) prices respectively, in Northern Ireland. It also creates a composite index; meaning that all three energy prices are combined to create one overarching figure, weighted for usage and market share.

The Consumer Council for Northern Ireland, as part of its Stop the Loan Sharks campaign and to obtain information to inform future discussion and the direction of any future policy in this area, commissioned Christians Against Poverty (CAP) to help, with others, to provide a clearer picture of the position in Northern Ireland – firstly, to help establish if illegal lending is going on and, if it is, the extent of such lending, the areas in which it is happening and any patterns or fluctuations in lending and borrowing behaviours which can be ascertained.

In 2018, the UK government announced a new crack down on illegal lending for the first time ever Northern Ireland (NI). This work focused on an educational campaign to raise awareness of the support available for vulnerable communities in relation to illegal lending, which would be led by the Consumer Council and supported by the Police Service for NI (PSNI).

The Consumer Council commissioned a series of research initiatives to further explore illegal money lending in NI and its consequences. One of these initiatives required Advice NI to explore and highlight the human story and the impacts illegal money lending has had on the clients who have used our advice services.

The Consumer Council is funded by HM Treasury to address the issue of illegal money lending in Northern Ireland. The focus of our work is research, education and supporting the development of alternatives forms of lending. This study explored the opinions, thoughts and experiences of consumers in Northern Ireland about financial matters concerning lending, savings and debt.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on consumers and The Consumer Council is concerned about the resilience of Northern Ireland consumers. There is a range of evidence outlined in this report that indicates Northern Ireland consumers were already ill equipped to deal with income shocks before the impact of COVID-19, with our levels of discretionary income lower than other UK regions and our level of savings the lowest across the UK.

The primary objective of this project was to explore the nature and extent of illegal money lending and problematic debt in Northern Ireland and place these findings in the context of knowledge and experiences gained in other parts of the UK and further afield.