We highlight the fact that clients we see with debts to government lacking financial resilience and more likely to be vulnerable than other clients. Despite this, government debt management practices are worse than those we see in other sectors.
Affordability is not properly assessed, vulnerabilities are rarely accounted for and data is not used effectively.
As a result practices make debt problems harder to deal with and cause deeper problems elsewhere as people use coping strategies like borrowing to get by because of the repayment demands of government organisations.
Wholesale changes are needed to improve things starting with a binding framework of good practice principles which applies across government.
You can download our full response here.