Jerome Rogers’ death began with two traffic fines. The 20-year-old was working as a bike courier delivering blood supplies to hospitals – earning a bit of money while he decided what he wanted to study – and living with his mum, Tracey, in Camden, north London, along with his elder brother and two younger sisters.

It all escalated before Tracey could even spot it. Jerome had moved into a bus lane a minute early while dropping off blood supplies for work – “He didn’t endanger people, like going through a red light,” Tracey says. Within two weeks, the two £65 fines had doubled. Within months, with so-called non-payment penalties and bailiff fees added, it was a debt of £1,019.

Tracey saw the bailiff herself the first time. She was on her way to work when she opened the door to see him standing in the front garden. “I panicked, thinking: ‘What’s he doing?’ Jerome said: ‘It’s fine, Mum. Just go to work.’ I think he was embarrassed, having his mum there listening. In hindsight, if I’d known I’d have stayed.”

Three hours later, Jerome called Tracey to tell her the bailiff was still there and wouldn’t leave. It was only when Tracey’s then partner, Bentley, drove over and paid £500 that the bailiff left. But Jerome was told he had to find a way to clear the rest: £128 a week for the next four weeks. “There’s no way Jerome could afford that,” Tracey says. “I couldn’t afford that, let alone Jerome on minimum wage.”

It was on a second visit to the family home that the bailiff clamped Jerome’s motorbike. Money was often tight for Jerome – he had severe asthma and wasn’t always well enough to work that winter – but with the bike clamped, he’d lost his only chance to earn a wage to pay off the debt.

Internet records show that over the next couple of weeks, throughout February, Jerome became quietly desperate: each time he got a text from the bailiff, he either searched for a payday loan or information on suicide. On 6 March Jerome sent his girlfriend texts saying he loved her and asking her never to forget him. The next day Jerome was found by his brother, Nat, and a family friend, in the woods near their home where he’d played as a child.

Last month an inquest into Jerome’s death recorded a verdict of suicide. While stating that the bailiff had been reasonable towards Jerome, the coroner expressed concern over some of the debt-collection agency’s practices. A spokesman for Camden council said the bailiffs it contracted were expected to abide by a code of practice and that it indicated to contractors when a debt should no longer be pursued because of inability to pay or vulnerability.

The 14 months since Jerome’s death have been the worst of Tracey’s life – the worst of “all our lives”, she says of her family – but she wants to speak out. Jerome would never have considered suicide if it hadn’t been for the debt, she says. “Jerome was planning on a holiday in Amsterdam with his girlfriend. We were all going to go to Florida and he was looking at what he wanted to do there. He was planning on university.” She pauses. “He was planning for his future.”

What happened to Jerome Rogers is devastating, but there is a bigger picture of an out-of control bailiff system, and politicians failing to fix it. In April 2014 the government introduced new laws in England and Wales pledging to strengthen protections against “rogue bailiffs and the unsound, unsafe or unfair methods”.

But debt charities warn that these measures are widely failing, with bailiffs regularly using intimidating behaviour, failing to accept affordable payment offers, and failing to take account of vulnerable people.

Local authorities in England and Wales passed 2.1m debts to bailiffs in the space of just 12 months

Worse still, the knock of the bailiff at the door is becoming a daily pressure for a growing number of people. The most recent major research into the area found that local authorities in England and Wales passed 2.1m debts to bailiffs in the space of just 12 months in 2014/15. That was a rise of 16% over a two-year period. And this week it emerged that in the first three months of 2017, nearly 300,000 county court judgments were filed against people unable to pay their debts: the highest quarterly figure for more than a decade. In an economic climate of rising inflation, slowing wage growth and rising utility bills – and the council tax arrears and rush to credit lenders that result from it – this is not a threat that will go away.

In Camden, Tracey is taking things “day by day, step by step”. The other children struggle at times – “They were all so close growing up,” she says – but the family are focusing on campaigning for changes in the law: something as simple as a requirement for bailiffs to install a payment plan, Tracey believes, could make a difference.

“With Jerome, if he could have paid £10 a week, that could have taken the pressure off him,” she says. “People just don’t talk about it until something tragic happens.”