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Skip tracing is the North American term for locating a person who has moved on or deliberately dropped out of contact, the subject having skipped town. In the UK the same discipline is simply called people tracing or debtor tracing: lawful data sources and enquiry work used to establish a person’s current verified address so that recovery or legal action can proceed.
Whatever the label, the work is identity resolution and verification: matching a subject across the electoral roll, credit reference data, corporate registers and open sources, then confirming which candidate address is genuinely current. UK practitioners also operate under a distinctly UK legal framework, the UK GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018, with legitimate interests as the usual lawful basis and proportionality as the constant discipline, covered in is tracing legal under UK GDPR.
The instructing profile is overwhelmingly commercial: solicitors locating defendants and witnesses, creditors and landlords pursuing absconded debtors and tenants, insolvency practitioners finding directors and assets, and probate teams finding beneficiaries. The output is a dated, sourced report stating a verified current address, strong enough to found service of proceedings and to exhibit in applications where the court asks what steps were taken to find the person.
UK searchers using the American term usually need exactly what our tracing team provides: fast, lawful, verified location of an individual, on a no trace no fee basis for standard cases, with the option to serve documents at the located address under the same instruction. Start with the details you hold; this answer lists what helps.
Tremark's tracing and asset teams work on a no trace no fee basis for standard traces, with court ready reports and fixed fees agreed up front. Get an exact price in under a minute.
Get an instant quote or find out more about our people tracing servicesPrefer to put your question to a person? Send the team a message and we will come back to you promptly.
This page provides general information about the law and practice in England and Wales and is not legal advice. Rules change and individual circumstances vary; always take advice from a solicitor on your specific situation. Prices shown are indicative, exclusive of VAT and confirmed in writing before any work begins.