Acknowledge of Service without a Particulars of Claim - CCMCC

[Ssssssssss]

Hello all,

I wonder if anyone could help me.

We received a court claim form on satuday with a date of service on it of 4th September. However there was nothing on the form in the particulars of claim box ( the claimant seems to have stuffed his claim into the Brief details of claim box instead. ). There is nothing in the particulars of claim and no indication of anything to follow or being attached.

We phoned CCMCC and they said that we have to file an acknowledge of service from the date of service on the claim form regardless. I did dispute this with her and said it was not logical but she insisted. She was a manager ! and I had spoke to 2 other people there before that who said that is the standard practice.

I've now read that without a Particulars of Claim, i shouldn't have files the acknowledge of service form.

What should i do ? I'm struggling to understand whether to ask for the case to be struck out which would incur further costs and would probably end up with the claimant putting another claim form in anyway, telling the claimant and court that although I've filed the acknowledge of service form, i still do not have any indication of whether a particulars of claim is to follow, OR tell the claimant only to tell me whether he intends to file anything else. OR to just go ahead with a defence and forget about telling anyone anything...just basing the defence of the brief details of claim ?

He has obviously broken the CPR for no telling me re particulars of claim and also just not providing one

HELP

[Ssssssssss]

Apologies I have not been in for a while, I’m well thank you and to see you have won your case is welcome good news. I’ve been very busy with work and just not had the time to pop in here.

To answer your question in post #361 you do not have to do anything, the judgement debtor should apply to the court using form N443 paying the fee of £15 and enclosing evidence of the settlement if they wish the CCJ to be removed from their credit file. You have spent enough time and money on this already.

Thank you for your kind words, we all give our time here for feee to help and consequently no repayment is due. Some people I have helped have wished to express their gratitude by way of a gift, but I couldn’t possibly accept anything if that were to be you intention.

Should you wish to show your gratitude please make a donation of your choosing to my local food bank here: https://colchester.foodbank.org.uk/

Hopefully you won’t have cause to consult the forum again, enjoy the upcoming Christmas period as best you can in these challenging times.

Hello jaguarsuk, apologies for the late reply, it's been a busy month here too. I have made a donation to the food bank and I'll make another in a few weeks. I'm glad that something good can come of all this stuff and thanks for allowing me to show my gratitude in some way. If ever there is a time where i can repay your help further in any way just let me know.

You enjoy your xmas and new year too and thanks once again. You are amazing and have restored my faith in humanity. I wish only good things for you in your life.

[jaguarsuk]

Apologies I have not been in for a while, I’m well thank you and to see you have won your case is welcome good news. I’ve been very busy with work and just not had the time to pop in here.

To answer your question in post #361 you do not have to do anything, the judgement debtor should apply to the court using form N443 paying the fee of £15 and enclosing evidence of the settlement if they wish the CCJ to be removed from their credit file. You have spent enough time and money on this already.

Thank you for your kind words, we all give our time here for feee to help and consequently no repayment is due. Some people I have helped have wished to express their gratitude by way of a gift, but I couldn’t possibly accept anything if that were to be you intention.

Should you wish to show your gratitude please make a donation of your choosing to my local food bank here: https://colchester.foodbank.org.uk/

Hopefully you won’t have cause to consult the forum again, enjoy the upcoming Christmas period as best you can in these challenging times.

[Ssssssssss]

Hi All, So it looks like our case is complete finally. I wanted to thank everyone on here for all the help given. I hope this case being on the forum can help anyone else who finds themselves in this situation and doesn't know what to do or where to turn. I'd especially like to thank jaguarsuk who we wouldn't have made it through without. Not sure where you are or how i can repay you. We owe you so much for everything you have done for us.

[Ssssssssss]

Actually, forget that, it seems like he has paid the full amount into our account yesterday !! At least it looks like it is there.

What do i have to do to let the court know that he has paid on time and in full and therefore doesn't need to go on the CCJ registry

[pt2537]

Hi, So as expected the builder hasn't paid off his CCJ or even acknowledged the letter we sent to him with payment details.

As it's lockdown now, i was wondering if anyone has had any experience using high court enforcement during the lockdown or whether i should wait ?

Also I do have one bank account detail for the builder so i was wondering if its worth doing a third party debt order or how difficult that would be ? I don't know much about them, just what I've googled.

Last question, if i get the judgement transferred up to the high court to get the high court enforcement in, does that mean that ALL further applications i make would have to be made in the high court ? E.g. if i get it transferred up, then have no joy with high court enforcement and so decide to get a third party debt order later on.

Thanks in advance

The Lord Chancellor has confirmed that enforcement of CCJs can continue. Get them in there asap

[Ssssssssss]

Hi, So as expected the builder hasn't paid off his CCJ or even acknowledged the letter we sent to him with payment details.

As it's lockdown now, i was wondering if anyone has had any experience using high court enforcement during the lockdown or whether i should wait ?

Also I do have one bank account detail for the builder so i was wondering if its worth doing a third party debt order or how difficult that would be ? I don't know much about them, just what I've googled.

Last question, if i get the judgement transferred up to the high court to get the high court enforcement in, does that mean that ALL further applications i make would have to be made in the high court ? E.g. if i get it transferred up, then have no joy with high court enforcement and so decide to get a third party debt order later on.

Thanks in advance

[Ssssssssss]

Just make sure they dont act unlawfully .................................https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan...shire-48743932

Blimey

[GBExile]

Just make sure they dont act unlawfully .................................https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan...shire-48743932

Pretty sure every high court bailiff would have done the same thing.

[pt2537]

Just make sure they dont act unlawfully .................................https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan...shire-48743932

[Ssssssssss]

I used https://dcbltd.com/ when Lloyds Bank owed me money & will be using them again for another matter coming up soon.

You never know your debtor might end up being embarrassed on national TV.

OK fab - I'll take a look at them.

Oh it would be glorious if they were embarrassed on tv

[GBExile]

Do i just pick a local company ?.

I used https://dcbltd.com/ when Lloyds Bank owed me money & will be using them again for another matter coming up soon.

You never know your debtor might end up being embarrassed on national TV.

[Ssssssssss]

1) An appeal doesnt stop enforcement. They have to secure permission to appeal, without that they are dead in the water.

2) You dont need the order, the time for compliance starts from the day the order is pronounced in court so that was the day you won.

3) the judge was wrong on the cancellation rights point, but it doesnt matter really, you won so thats that.

4) When you get the order and the time for payment has passed, dont go back to the Court, send it to the HCEO

Thanks pt2537.

That's good to know regarding appeal. I hope they don't prolong this and we'll look at enforcing it asap after the deadline for payment. Should we look into in before that ? I'm just wondering if I should do something now ? OK RE HCEO - I'll do that. Do i just pick a local company ?

Yes I believe they should have been penalised for cancellation rights violation as I read the law clauses on this at the beginning of our case and i believed they should have been fined for that as its a criminal offence (at least that is what CAB told me). But i think i can forward to Trading Standards and ask them to follow up on that maybe now we have a judgement ?

It is a great result but :-

She didn't ask many of her own questions in the hearing and instead told us to cross examine each other. We didn't go through the schedule in detail on the day and she didn't ask anything about the numbers we or the expert put in. I really wish she had.

I do also think she should have been a bit stricter and not let them get away with provable lies in the witness statement but I didn't know how to push it so she would do anything. The fact they even doctored photos should have been taken seriously too.

On a more positive note though, she did go through quite a lot of the paperwork and evidence beforehand and there was a lot of it so that is really good ( 3 big fat folders worth). Maybe she felt she knew enough from that as it was pretty detailed apart from explanation of the numbers.

[pt2537]

1) An appeal doesnt stop enforcement. They have to secure permission to appeal, without that they are dead in the water.

2) You dont need the order, the time for compliance starts from the day the order is pronounced in court so that was the day you won.

3) the judge was wrong on the cancellation rights point, but it doesnt matter really, you won so thats that.

4) When you get the order and the time for payment has passed, dont go back to the Court, send it to the HCEO

[Ssssssssss]

Hello jaguarsuk Hope you are well.

We got our verdict on Thursday last week after so long !!

She (the judge) awarded ZERO to the other side and awarded us £4300. Add to this the experts fee of £750, £50 interest, £455 Court fee and £95 for my time and it comes up to £5650 they now owe us.

So all in all a fantastic result. The figure isn't everything we claimed for but given our total amount we gave them was £4115, and she rightly didn't offset their last instalment, we essentially are getting all of our money back.

We had originally claimed £6500 ish assuming there would be an adjustment to take into account the other sides final installment that we had refused to pay of £1600 ish. So looking at it, she's come up with a similar figure to that. I suspect she must have thought its fair to get all our money back and not get extra.

She said she was looking at 3 things. Was there a contract and when was in created, were goods the right goods and was workmanship below standard. She also stated which laws applied.

She essentially found in our favour on pretty much everything except a few minor points. She said :-

- failure to provide a 14 day cooling off period was a breach of contract but she didn't think we'd have used it so no harm done.
- she found their story about buying tiles and getting approvals to be implausible.
- she didn't accept there was any agreement to vary the goods (tiles and others). It's interesting though as she seemed to ignore all that when it came to the pay out and instead concentrated on them not using proper skill and care.
- dot and dab was a clear breach and not to standards and she believed thats what they had done.
- she said the other side should not have told the expert not to do exploratory works, and that the expert should have been allowed to do those works and should have done them.
- She accepted the whole bathroom needed to be re-tiled and as a consequence everything would have to be redone.
- She didn't accept the flooring was not right though.

One downside (and lesson learnt for us) is that she never really asked us about the numbers in our schedule or the experts schedule. That worked against us slightly because we had split our numbers out differently to the experts for each item in the schedule e.g. tiling around the shower was in the shower section and not in the re-tile whole bathroom section on our schedule but on the experts schedule, it was all lumped into one. So she assumed our figure for retiling the bathroom was £2600 ish, when in fact it was £3900. The experts figure was around £4000 which is in line with ours.

If you recall, we had to do this to get our numbers to add up in the schedule and put the work into what we thought was the most relevant section. And to keep it simple and not detailed explanation or verbose for fear of another strike out application. I do feel she should have asked us about all that in the hearing though but it's a lesson learnt for us really too, to tell her in the hearing whether she asks or not.

She also wouldn't allow us to tell her this as she gave her judgement (which is when we realised that is what she had done ) - i suspect it was too late at that point and i think the total she came up with was relatively fair anyway and I suspect that maybe she was aiming for a figure around the full pay back of money mark anyway.

I did ask for anything i'm entitled to as my costs for having to come to court 3 or 4 times now. She said she can only aware £95 max. I thought this was per hearing but she was adamant it was the max amount for the whole lot.

I would have liked her to throw the book at the other side for lying on their witness statement but she let it go.

The other side have 21 days to pay. I asked her about enforcement and she told me to contact the court if they don't pay.

Firstly, the other side said he was on step change and in heavy debt and could he pay £30 a month. The judge said she didn't think that would be acceptable and asked us and of course we said we want our money and have been waiting long enough. She then told them they could work with stepchange to get a better plan but the court normally likes payments to be made as quickly as possible and not prolonged (30 a month would take 15 years !). (FYI - i don't believe them - they had money enough for a solicitor!).

They then said they didn't agree with the judgement anyway, and that they hadn't had a chance to answer all our claims in our witness statement - complained they had never seen that stuff before ( i note we never saw any of theirs before either and they still didn't submit the tile receipt !!). So they said they were going to appeal.

So that was where the judgement hearing ended.

We haven't received the court order yet but I'm sure that will come in a day or two.