Removing An Old CCJ

[Lucas10]

Hi,

I was involved in a disagreement with a service provider about payment for services in 2012. They involved a collection agency and we continued to exchange letters relating to this for a few weeks. All went quiet and I heard nothing else about it.

I moved house, and went back to the old house periodically to pick up old mail.

Around January 2013, I visited the house to collect mail to find a CCJ judgement form for £140 from November, but no previous claim form for the case to allow me to defend it.

I immediately contacted the company and paid the judgement, but as this was beyond 30 days after the judgement, this has remained on file.

Now this is beginning to cause me issue with credit, I'm looking into how I can resolve this issue.

The main issues I have are:

a) I never was actually sent a claim to allow me to defend myself, or at least I never received it. I Probably last picked up my mail in November of that year, and there was no sign of it then either.

b) because the judgement went to a previous address, I wasn't able to act within thirty days of it being issued to pay it off and have it removed from file. As soon as i did find out about it, I paid it immediately.

I spoke to the court who advised I would need to file a N244 ‘Application Notice’ to try and have the judgement set aside. My issue with this is that I don't have the evidence available to reopen this and defend myself.. I've even paid the judgement, so I don't believe I can set aside this judgement. What I want to do is have this removed from my file as I did pay it as soon as I found out about it.

Would a court entertain doing this under the circumstances? Can they even do this?

It has only reared its head as it affects my credit rating now and will do for a further three years.

Any advice is appreciated.

Thanks!

[FlamingParrot]

Re: Removing An Old CCJ

There was another thread where I posted about a similar case. The argument there was to get the judgment creditor to agree to set aside the CCJ by consent, however, the poster in question had not yet paid the CCJ and was going to use an offer of payment in full as a bargaining tool to get the creditor to consent to the set aside. In your case you've already paid it off so there's little incentive left for them to consent, nothing to gain. Even with the creditor's consent, the court still has the last word and may refuse to set aside a judgment even with the creditor's consent. :juge:

To apply for set aside via the N244 application route described above you'd need to show the court not only that you were not able to respond to the claim because you didn't receive the court papers but you'd also need to have a valid defence so if you had received the papers, you'd have been able to successfully defend the claim. As you have paid the judgment, the court isn't likely to agree that you'd have defended this claim. :mmph:

Sadly I can't really see anything other than getting a certificate of satisfaction for the judgment, which should be marked as satisfied but will still be on record.

http://www.trustonline.org.uk/unders...satisfied-ccjs

If the register shows you’ve got a CCJ and haven’t paid it off, it’s even more difficult to get credit.
If you pay a CCJ more than a month after the judgment date, it stays on the register for six years. There is no way to remove it.

[Lucas10]

Re: Removing An Old CCJ

Thanks for your reply. I think you've confirmed what I thought. I guess I'll just have to wait out the last three years then