Town hall chiefs want to protect people from falling prey to loan sharks by finding an ‘alternative source of credit’ for hard-pressed residents during the cost of living crisis. Greater Manchester Police last month teamed up with the England Illegal Money Lending Team (IMLT) to crack down on loan sharks operating in the Stockport area.
The targeted campaign also seeks to raise awareness of illegal money lending to prevent people from becoming trapped in a cycle of debt and intimidation. But Stockport Labour councillor Andy Sorton has warned there is another dimension to the problem that still needs to be addressed.
“There’s a cost of living crisis, loan sharks will prosper,” he told a meeting of the full council on Thursday night. “While the police can enforce, what they can’t do is find that alternative credit option for people.
“We are not talking about people with bad debts, we’re talking about people with a poor credit rating or no credit rating through no fault of their own.” Coun Sorton said that another ‘difficulty’ was the credit unions were not lending to people and had begun to act more like banks.
However he said the council’s deputy chief executive had been involved in talks about working with credit unions to help them support people who struggled to borrow at reasonable rates. “It’s not giving money away, because the loans have been put back - but it’s making facilities there that people that don’t have a credit rating don’t fall into the trap of the loan sharks,” he added.
“There’s no alternative, there’s nowhere else for these people to go - and it’s things like school uniforms, it’s things like food when there’s a difficult bill coming, it’s those things.” He asked Coun Mark Hunter, Lib Dem leader of the council, if the two parties could join forces to pursue the issue and ‘find an alternative source of credit’.
“Maybe support the credit unions with some of the things they are doing - specifically [for] people that may be susceptible to loan sharking,” he added. Coun Hunter, who earlier in the meeting expressed his full support for the GMP/IMLT crackdown - said he was aware loan sharking was a very serious problem.
“For my part I am keen, as I hope I made clear earlier on, that the council is doing all it can to support its residents through our unprecedentedly difficult times,” he told Coun Sorton, adding that his team was ‘willing to engage’ with any ideas or suggestions.
“If it’s a question of having a meeting take place on some specific proposals or ideas, we are [very happy to do that]. “But in general I think the council has a responsibility to do everything it possibly can and the vulnerable, those most in need, are given that protection wherever we possibly can.”
While presenting his leader’s report, Coun Hunter described loan sharks as ‘a dangerous threat to our community’. “They use intimidation to bully people into paying back huge loans, charging exorbitant interest rates and threatening their victims with violence if they don’t pay,” he said.
“Research shows that 90pc of people who have borrowed from a loan shark live in a constant state of worry, anxiety and depression. Over a third of victims have even contemplated suicide.”
The leader said it was ‘shameful’ that the situation ‘exists in our borough in this day and age’. “I’m sure I speak for everyone in the chamber that says we are fully behind the police in their efforts to crack down on this,” he added.
Stockport council met at the town hall on Thursday night (October 6).
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