We can only accept County Court Judgments in excess of £600 including any costs or interest awarded.
We charge an initial fee of £200 +VAT to cover the cost of direct enforcement if this is required plus 20% of any recovered amount.
No you are not. We may advise a course of action but you stay in complete control of your exposure to additional costs.
We do not charge any further abortive costs however the initial £200 +VAT enforcement fee is non-refundable once enforcement starts.
Yes we can. Provided the CCJ is in excess of £600 in value and it is less than 6 years since the date judgment was awarded we can help.
If your debtor has left the country we cannot enforce the CCJ but we may be able to assist via our International Debt Collection service.
No it is not. We regularly handle CCJs with multiple named defendants. Please note the £200 +VAT enforcement fee is payable per defendant.
Yes we can, but you will need a free claim review and bespoke quotation.
There are a number of other potential avenues available for creditors who are looking to collect on a CCJ, but many of these are unsuitable in our view as the costs are high and the effectiveness questionable at best.
Some of these options are expanded on below:
Previously known as an Oral Exam, an Order to Obtain Information is a method we can use to investigate the assets of a debtor. For a fixed fee your debtor will be summoned to court to be interviewed at length by a senior court official or District Judge about their assets.
If the debtor is a Limited Company the Managing Director or a senior Management figure will be summoned to answer questions about the company's assets.
If the debtor does not co-operate with the court it is possible the matter may be referred to a higher judge, usually a circuit judge, who can issue a fine or even send the debtor to prison for up to 14 days.
Given these penalties the order can be an effective way to investigate the debtor's assets, as the interview is conducted under oath.
The inconvenience of being summoned to court plus the very real penalties for failing to attend can often be all that is required to bring forth payment.
However it does have issues and in the event a debtor does not engage or misleads the court your options to escalate this are limited.
An Attachment of Earnings can be a very effective recovery tool against a debtor who is employed (but not self employed). Put simply, a fixed amount is collected from the debtor's employer on a weekly or monthly basis and transferred to you, the creditor. This is achieved by means of a two part action.
Initially the court will instruct a debtor to complete a form illustrating their incoming funds and outgoing costs, this is called a statement of means. Should the debtor refuse to co-operate the court may require them to attend to provide this information.
Again if the debtor fails to comply with the courts direction it is possible that they can be sent to prison for up to 14 days or fined for not supplying the information.
Once the information is received from the debtor the court will set a Protected Earnings threshold, which enables your debtor to cover their basic living expenses. From the remainder the court will decide on a suitable monthly repayment amount and will instruct the debtor's employer to pay this amount direct to you.
This avenue of enforcement is extremely effective, however it may take longer to recoup the full amount than some of the other options available.
Some debt collectors say that the most effective means to enforce a Judgment in excess of £750 against a private individual is to instigate Personal Bankruptcy proceedings.
We do not agree.
Personal Bankruptcy proceedings will almost never result in an unsecured creditor receiving payment. Even if you are the creditor that instigates the proceedings you will not become a "preferential" creditor (such as a mortgagee) and your Judgment will remain unsecured.
Whilst in theory it is possible that unsecured creditors will receive a payment after all preferential creditors, in practice this is very rarely the case.
As a general rule we will not recommend this course of action to our clients as the fees are considerable, often in the region of £2500 and the likelihood of seeing any return on the investment is negligible.
However if your debtor has considerable assets or cash reserves it can be profitable to pursue this avenue of enforcement in a very limited number of cases.
