News item | 16-11-2023 | 5:35 PM
The cabinet, the Association of Dutch Municipalities (VNG), the trade association for financial aid providers NVVK and the Divosa knowledge center have jointly drawn up a plan to improve debt assistance in the Netherlands.
The plan – Elements of Basic Services – will offer municipalities practical guidelines and tools to provide effective and accessible help to people with problematic debts. Municipalities can start working on many of these elements right away, while others still require further research. In addition, from 2024 onwards, the government will structurally make an additional €40 million available for, among other things, municipal services.
The “Elements of Basic Services” emphasizes the need to provide assistance to people with debts in a structured manner. These elements include a registration system that allows different care providers to work together better. The standard provision of a restructuring loan with a repayment term of 18 months and the provision of sufficient aftercare are also part of the basic service. For example, personal contact must always be made if someone has a relapse after a debt relief program and is in danger of accumulating serious debts again.
Minister for Poverty Policy, Participation and Pensions Carola Schouten: “There are too many Dutch people whose debts are growing beyond their heads. The many unpaid bills ensure that they are never worry-free. The debts will determine their lives. Debt counseling should give people perspective again and help them get life back on track. Then it should not matter in which municipality you live, that help must be available. It is therefore very important that we – together with the VNG, Divosa and the NVVK – offer municipalities tools to organize this properly.”
The plan is a response to observations, such as those of the Ombudsman, that the quality of assistance provided can vary greatly per municipality. This should be improved by bundling good experiences of municipalities in basic services. The aim is for all municipalities to implement the guidelines and guidelines of “Elements of Basic Services”.
By improving help to people, the parties want to achieve the government’s goal of halving the number of households with problematic debts compared to 2015. At that time, 8.6 percent of households lived with problematic debts. By 2030, this number should have fallen to 3.8 percent. Last year, the period in which people receive assistance was shortened from three to one and a half years. In this way, people should gain perspective on a debt-free life more quickly. And in September, Minister Schouten sent the amended National Collection Vision to Parliament, the aim of which is to ensure that the central government pays more attention to people’s circumstances when collecting debts.