Enfield terminates relationship with Cobbetts' debt recovery arm

Incasso and Enfield have worked together for a number of years, with the debt recovery specialist recivering more than £500,000 in unpaid council tax for the local authority in 2006.

It is not known why the contract was terminated. A spokesperson for Enfield said it did not want to “add to a no doubt difficult situation” by commenting.

The Lawyer revealed earlier this month that staff at Incasso were put on redundancy consultation weeks after the business was bought by HL Legal (1 March 2013).

At one point Incasso was the only team from Cobbetts without a new home following the Manchester firm’s collapse.

DWF had agreed to purchase the majority of Cobbetts as part of a pre-pack administration (6 February 2013), but it did not take on the firm’s finance litigation team or Incasso. Walker Morris went on to acquire the finance litigation practice (7 February 2013) while HL Legal purchased the debt recovery business from KPMG, whose partners Mark Firmin, Brian Green and Howard Smith acted as the failed firm’s administrators, a week later (14 February 2013).

The Cobbetts partners who transferred to DWF when the firm went into administration at the end of January (30 January 2012) are understood to be locked in for two years at the firm (4 March 2013). Meanwhile, Cobbetts former managing partner Nick Carr and senior partner Stephen Benson have not been given a seat on the firm’s management board.