Default on unenforcable debt

[SRP844]

I wonder if anyone could offer me some advice on a default that has been applied to an unenforcible credit card debt I have.

The debt was originially an Egg credit card taken out in 2001, it was passed to Barclaycard in about 2011, and was defaulted and passed to PRA Group in 2021 when I started a debt management plan. I sent PRA a CCA request in February this year, and they have replied saying Barclaycard can't providde a copy of the original agreement and they have deemed it unenforcibe. They also enclosed a copy of a letter from Barclaycard saying they were unable to provide histroic terms.

I've heard that defaults shouldn't be applied to pre-2007 debts that are unenforcible. Do I have any grounds for complaining and getting the default removed, or would that just make them more likely to look for information that could make it enforcible?

[echat11]

Hi SRP844

Although the debt is unenforceable (they can't find / provide copy of the CCA), the money is still owed, so they can carry out all the other activities to collect that debt, barring Court action, that includes adding defaults (providing they have been added correctly). The default will drop off automatically after 6 years.

[atticus]

The Limitation Act 1980 only serves to provide a defence to court action commenced after the expiry of the limitation period.

[pt2537]

Grace and Blackhorse gave some guidance on reporting to credit files.

1. I have not found the choice between these submissions at all easy. But in the end I have concluded that Mr Brennan is right. It was not accurate to describe Mr Grace as a defaulter under his hire purchase agreement once a competent court had decided that it was irremediably unenforceable against him. My reasons follow.
2. It is common ground that a default registration with a CCA is a stigma, with potentially serious consequences for the consumer's credit rating. Yet where Parliament has decided that a class of consumer should not have to pay a debt of that kind, and a court has decided (or the parties have recognised) that a particular consumer is within that class, I consider it very counter-intuitive to think that he can accurately be stigmatised as a defaulter in a semi-public register without, at least, the unenforceable nature of the debt being recorded in the same entry. For it is invariably the creditor's default in complying with the CCA that has led to the consumer being regarded by Parliament as not having to pay the debt, and a statutory liberty not to pay is so central to any continued non-payment that the registration of his non-payment as a default is generally inaccurate unless accompanied with a reference to that liberty.
3. I recognise that this conclusion may require a re-examination of remediable unenforceability, because I am by no means sure that the same analysis may not equally apply. Why should the exempt debtor be labelled a defaulter during any limited period during which Parliament had decided that he should not have to pay? But that question is for another day.
4. The outcome of this analysis is that this part of the appeal succeeds. To the limited extent that Mr Grace is not statute barred, the breach of the DPA constituted by the default registration did cause the alleged loss, because no other registration of him as a defaulter under his hire purchase agreement could then have been made, there having then been no facility for the simultaneous registration of the non-enforceability of his debt.