Lowell Solicitors have a CCJ against me, what can I do?

[Jolz1986]

Hi Beagles,

Really hope someone can help put my mind at ease with this or as it constantly feels like being bullied into a corner by this company... I have been receiving letters and calls from Lowell now for around 4 years and have never answered the phone or responded/acknowleded them (don't know if that makes any difference or not). Around the time these calls started my father had just committed suicide and on top of already being made homeless two years prior to this and struggling with mental health issues surrounding that, my life simply fell apart. I know it's not the right thing to do but it has been such an uphill struggle getting back to a somewhat normal daily routine that just to cope with every day I have just ignored everything from my life before that time.

Just two weeks ago I began to open up some of these letters that I've been ignoring and the very first one I opened was a letter notifying me that a CCJ was about to be entered against me if I did not respond by 09/01/19 (the date I was reading it was 12/01/19). That's when I found this website and found many many cases saying I should send certain documents requesting my original credit agreement but they all were regarding bills and credit cards whereas my debt is appx £1500 for an old overdraft which I believe is not covered or is a different agreement in some way. So with working 5-6 days a week and not realistically having the time to read through everything I tried to carry on while hoping that this will go away, but today I opened up a new bunch of letters, the first one being a judgment from the county court telling me I have to pay £100 a month to Lowell portfolio.

I just want to know if there is anything I can do to prevent this given the circumstances, or if I do have to pay this back at least to do so with a much more lenient way than the CCJ. I should point out that Lowell Portfolio own approximately 6 other debts all from before things went south for me (all of a less amount but totalling up to around £5000) and having read A LOT of comments here and elsewhere about Lowell Portfolio and their methods, it really feels like they have chosen the highest one to pursue me with to see if I'll be an easy target and cough up.

I also want to add that I'm not someone who is trying to simply walk away from responsibility of these debts I'm not disputing some of them, I entered into credit agreements and life dealt me a hard hand that made me default on them, I'm happy to pay these back now that I'm back on track, but there are a few, this one included, that only happened in the first place because fines and fees for things beyond my control just filled up my overdraft in the time I was homeless, which I think gives me good enough reason to contest them.

Apologies for the long first message, I really hope someone has the patience to read through and offer some advice!
Thank you for your time

[MIKE770]

• Set Aside Application
• Amethyst asked help for you

[Amethyst]

Morning, Thanks Mike xxx

Welcome Jolz, It sounds like you have had a rough time of things so it's not suprising that you've ignored, what are when it comes down to it, small annoying consumer credit debts - I know it is complicated to get your head round the court procedures whenyou haven't dealt with a claim before.

£100 is pretty much the standard default installment rate. Had you actually received the claim, or just that letter from Lowell telling you about the claim? ( not sure if it just happened to be the letter you opened and then you looked through older post, or if you've just been binning the post before?)

When you wrote to Lowell, did you say that you'd got a letter from them but hadn't received the claim? or just send a standard CCA letter?

You do have a couple of options -you can pay the installments as ordered, you can apply to the court for redetermination if the £100 ordered is unaffordable, you can apply to set aside the judgment so you can have opportunity to defend, or you could ( obviously depending on your circumstances ) pay the full amount within 28 days from the judgment date so that it isn't registered on judgment register / your credit file for 6 years.

If you can get it set aside then if you don't want to defend it, it'd be a case of calling Lowell to negotiate a payment arrangement, and personally, if nothing is over 6 years old since you defaulted on it ( is it all still on your credit file ?) , then I'd try negotiate a payment plan across all £5000 worth of debt so you have all those out of the way so you don't have to worry further about them.