HISTORY

The Zacchaeus 2000 Trust, more commonly known as Z2K, was started as a volunteer organisation in early 1990s by a group of concerned Christians who refused to pay the poll tax on the grounds it was unjust. The volunteers helped other poll tax defaulters as McKenzie Friends. This spread to work with vulnerable debtors. In 1997 Z2K was registered as a charity and the Reverend Paul Nicolson ran it as a volunteer until 2007 when funds were raised to set up an office and to employ staff. In 1997 Reverend Paul Nicolson started training other volunteers to be McKenzie Friends and since then, the charity has run over 50 courses, training over 300 people.

OUR PRINCIPAL ACHIEVEMENTS

• Represented  over 150 vulnerable debtors with multiple problems ensuring that they are dealt with fairly and proportionately by the courts and that they avoid the downward spiral into increased debt, depression and sometimes suicide which happens  to the unrepresented
• Trained over 300 volunteers who now actively support vulnerable debtors within their communities
• Commissioned the first ever research into the adequacy of minimum incomes which led to the campaign for minimum income standards, the principles of which have been adopted, for example by the GLA in the campaign for the Living Wage for London
• Responsible for the inclusion of guidance on how to deal with vulnerable people into The Ministry of Justice’s National Standards for Enforcement Agents (i.e. bailiffs)
• Formed a coalition of 69 charitable organizations to lobby government on minimum income standards
• Persuaded the Government to abandon the principle that bailiffs have the right to use force to enforce debts introduced into the law in 2007.
   

OUR WORK FOCUSES ON

• individual cases where vulnerable debtors are faced with harsh enforcement of council tax, rent, fines and tax credit overpayments,
• training volunteer members of NGOs to be McKenzie Friends to do this work,
• lobbying parliament about inadequate statutory minimum incomes, the enforcement procedures for rent arrears, council tax, fines, tax credit, benefit overpayments and the use of bailiffs as they impinge aggressively on the impoverished vulnerable people we serve.
  

  A significant cause of debt in the UK is the inadequacy of statutory minimum incomes for people in work, unemployed or pensioners. The Zacchaeus 2000 Trust trains volunteer advocates for people who are facing draconian enforcement of rent and council tax arrears against the inadequate minimum wage, unemployment benefits, tax credits, and state pensions, or who are being exploited by door-to-door-lenders at interest rates up to and over 300% APR.

  With the support of 68 Non Governmental Organisations with 10 million members, who include the BMA, the Royal College of Nursing, the Faculty of Public Health at the Royal College of Physicians and the UK Public Health Association, we are petitioning the government for independent and transparent research into the minimum incomes needed for healthy living.

  In addition the General Synod of the Church of England, The Methodist Conference, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and UNISON  have all passed unanimous conference decisions supporting the petition. The list also includes Caritas Social Action Network, the Muslim Council of Great Britain, the Children's and the Pensioners' Charities and the National Consumer Council.

  We are a Christian Trust committed by our constitution to work with people of good will of all faiths and of none.

  Rev Paul Nicolson Chairman.

Our chairman, Reverend Paul Nicolson, introduces Zacchaeus 2000 Trust in this video.