You have to make a formal complaint to HMCTS. It is not the claimants fault that they obtained a CCJ by default. I tis the fecked up HMCTS IT system that has done this. However, they will deny any responsibility and insist that the claim was issued.
The only way to challenge that is to rebut their presumption of service by putting them to strict proof that they did in fact post the claim. It will all depend on what evidence they provide, which is unlikely to be conclusive, if any.
How you get them to do that is the issue. That is why I suggest you get your MP involved.
As I mentioned, this is not something new and there were a spate of these a few months ago. There is no way that a Judgment in Default for the Claimant form would be printed on the back of an N1SDT Claim cover letter. The claim cover letter should have been sent together with the actual N1SDT Claim Form pack. You never received one which is why you knew nothing about it and ended up with a CCJ in default. Now you have received the notice of the CCJ printed on the back of the claim form pack cover letter. Two completely separate parts of the process. Do you understand why this is highly irregular?
Previously when I pointed this out to HMCTS, they just entered denial mode and refused to admit that this was highly irregular and tried to fob it off as a "Xerox printing room" error.
In the meantime, if the CCJ is not paid in full within 30 days, it is entered on to your credit file and remains there for 6 years causing excruciating financial pain. If you do pay it after 30 days, it remains on your credit file but marked as "satisfied", which is only a degree or two less financially painful.
If the issue was one that the claimant or their solicitor was responsible for, then you could simply apply for a set aside and recover the cost of the application. However, in this case, the claimant has done nothing wrong and the court would not award your costs as it is a third party, the HMCTS, that is responsible. You'd have to sue them for the cost.
You can still apply for a set aside under CPR 13.3 (any other reason) and as that is discretionary, it may not even be granted and even if it is, you'd have paid the £313 application fee and still have the prospect of the claim to defend. Not that it would ever reach a haring once 'live' as DCB Legal always discontinue any defended claim. However, you'd be £313 out of pocket unless you can persuade HMCTS to refund your application fee. Good luck with that.
If the CCJ is paid in full within 30 days, that is the end of the matter and it is expunged from the record.
So, to conclude, you only have two realistic options. Which one is best depends on what matters more to you: spending the least money, or making sure you get a proper chance to defend and potentially get your £313 back later from HMCTS.
Option 1 – Pay the CCJ within one calendar month1. You pay the full judgment amount (the sum on the court order) directly to the claimant or using the payment details given.
2. Because you pay in full within one calendar month of the judgment date, the CCJ is removed from the public register and will not appear on your credit file.
3. You do not need to make any application to the court. No N244, no hearing, no extra fees.
4. This is probably cheaper in pure cash terms than paying a £313 set aside fee, especially if the judgment is for less than £313.
5. The downside is that you are paying a judgment you never had a fair chance to defend, and the claim itself is never tested. You also give up the argument that you were forced to spend £313 because of HMCTS’ mistake, because you did not actually spend it.
Option 2 – Apply to set aside the CCJ (N244, fee £313)1. You apply on form N244 for the default judgment to be set aside. The fee is £313 unless you qualify for help with fees.
2. In your witness statement you explain that you never received the original claim pack and that the first you knew about the case was the default judgment. You exhibit the strange double-sided document (judgment on one side, claim cover letter on the other) as evidence of an HMCTS printing or service failure.
3. If the judge accepts that you were not properly served, the default judgment is set aside. The CCJ is then removed from the register, so it will not damage your credit record.
4. The claim goes back to the defended stage. You file a defence and the claim proceeds in the normal way.
5. Because this is a DCB Legal claim, the practical reality is that once you have a live defended case again, there is a very strong chance (>99%) they will discontinue before any final hearing. In every similar case, they do not want the cost and risk of a trial once a proper defence is on the table.
6. The £313 fee is not recoverable from the claimant if they have done nothing wrong. However, if the judge accepts there was an HMCTS error and records that in the order, you then have a clear basis to complain to HMCTS and, if needed, to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman via your MP, asking for that £313 to be refunded as compensation for maladministration.
7. The downside is the higher upfront cost and the time and effort involved in preparing the N244, your defence and any later complaint. There is no automatic guarantee that HMCTS will refund you; that may require a separate complaints process.
How to decideIf your main priority is simply to keep your credit file clean, spend the least money and avoid any more hassle, paying the judgment in full within one calendar month is the simplest route. Once paid, the CCJ will not appear on your credit record.
If you feel strongly that you should not have a judgment against you that you never had a chance to defend, and you are willing to spend £313 and a bit of time on paperwork, then applying for a set aside is the principled option. In your type of case, with DCB Legal involved, there is a 99.9% chance that once the judgment is set aside and a proper defence is filed, they will discontinue and you will never actually have to go to trial. You then have a decent basis to seek a refund of the £313 from HMCTS through their complaints and Ombudsman process.
If you want to go through the complaints process here is how you need to go about it:
The HMCTS complaints process has three stages.
Stage 1You send your complaint to the court or the Civil National Business Centre. You explain the administrative mistake, what went wrong, and what loss it caused you. They give you a written response. This first response usually comes from local staff and may simply repeat that documents were issued correctly.
Stage 2If you are not satisfied, you ask for the complaint to be escalated. A more senior manager reviews it and gives a second written response. They may still deny any error, but you must complete this stage before you can escalate further.
Stage 3If you still disagree, you ask for a final review by HMCTS’s Customer Investigations Team. This is the last internal stage. They will either accept fault and offer redress or maintain that no error occurred. Once you receive this final response, the internal HMCTS process is finished.
After the HMCTS process is complete, you can go to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO).
The OmbudsmanYou cannot contact the Ombudsman directly. You must ask your MP to refer the complaint for you. You send your MP the full history: your three HMCTS complaint responses, your evidence, and an explanation of the injustice and financial loss.
The Ombudsman looks at whether HMCTS provided poor service or made a serious administrative mistake. If they find maladministration, they can recommend that HMCTS refund the money you lost and pay extra compensation for the impact on you. Their recommendations are normally followed.
In summary: you must complete all three HMCTS complaint stages first. After the final response, you ask your MP to send the case to the Ombudsman, who can then direct HMCTS to refund your £313 and offer further compensation if appropriate.
Have a read oof this BBC expose of HMCTS denial of IT bugs back in August:
Courts service 'covered up' IT bug that caused evidence to go missingYou can use that BBC article, but it is supporting evidence, not a silver bullet. Here is how it helps you.
First, it shows you are not imagining things. The BBC piece confirms that HMCTS has had serious IT or systems problems and, worse, that there were attempts to play them down. That makes your account of a faulty printing or issuing process much more credible. When HMCTS tells you “everything is fine, it was just a one-off printing error”, you can fairly say that independent reporting suggests wider problems with their systems.
Second, it helps you argue that your experience is part of a pattern. There have already been a spate of identical cases where defendants never received the claim packs but received default CCJs printed on the back of claim pack cover letters. The article lets you say: there is public evidence that HMCTS systems and processes have been unreliable, and my case fits that pattern exactly.
Third, it increases the pressure on HMCTS and the Ombudsman. When you complain, you can say that given the BBC’s reporting of IT bugs and lack of transparency at HMCTS, it is not good enough for them simply to assert that your claim pack was printed and posted correctly without providing any real evidence or explanation. It makes it harder for them to dismiss you with a stock paragraph.
In practical terms, you can use the article in three places:
1. In your HMCTS complaint and any escalation. You would say, in plain terms, that BBC reporting in August exposed serious IT or process bugs and a lack of openness at HMCTS. You then link that to your own case: you never received the claim pack, and the default judgment arrived printed back to back with the claim cover letter. You invite them to explain, in detail, how that could happen if their systems are working properly. You then say that in light of the BBC reporting you do not accept a bare assertion that “the original pack was printed and sent”.
2. In your N244 witness statement. You can briefly mention that public reporting has already exposed IT or process failures at HMCTS, and that the strange double-sided judgment and cover letter is consistent with a document processing error rather than any failure on your part. You still focus mainly on the basic point: you did not receive the claim pack, and you are asking for a set aside so you can defend the claim.
3. In your Ombudsman referral via your MP. By the time you reach the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, HMCTS will probably be standing by their denial. You then point out that their denial is inconsistent with what has been reported publicly about their systems, and that in your case the physical evidence (the double-sided print, the absence of any earlier documents) is much more consistent with a system failure than with proper service. You ask the Ombudsman to investigate whether HMCTS properly checked their own records, in light of known IT issues, before denying fault and refusing to refund your £313.
The key thing to remember is the BBC article strengthens your story and undermines HMCTS’s blanket denial, but it does not prove your individual case on its own. You still need to rely on the concrete facts of your situation: no claim pack ever received, first knowledge was the CCJ, and the highly irregular double-sided document. The article simply shows that when you say “your systems went wrong”, you are not just speculating, you are pointing to a problem that has already been publicly exposed.
For your case, it is the rebuttal of the presumption of delivery that is most likely to be a winning point. The presumption of delivery is not some magic shield for HMCTS. It is a starting point only. If you put forward credible evidence that you did not receive the claim pack, the evidential burden shifts back onto the party asserting service – in this case HMCTS (because the claim was court-served).
This is how you, as the defendant, would run it:
First, you give clear factual evidence to rebut the presumption. In your N244 witness statement you say, in simple terms: this was my correct address at the time; I was living there; I routinely received other post; I never received any claim pack or response pack from the court or from the claimant; the very first document I received relating to this claim was the default judgment; that judgment arrived on a sheet of paper where the reverse side contained the claim pack covering letter, which should have been sent months earlier. You also explain that you had a real defence and every reason to respond if papers had arrived, and that you acted promptly as soon as you saw the judgment.
Second, you rely heavily on the physical irregularity as objective evidence. You exhibit the double-sided document. You then spell out the obvious point: if the cover letter had really been printed and posted at the start of the claim, how on earth did it end up being printed on the back of the judgment months later? The most likely explanation is that the cover letter was not correctly generated or enveloped when it should have been, and only appeared because of a later print or system error. That is directly inconsistent with their story that everything was printed and posted properly.
Once you have done that, you say expressly to the judge: I have rebutted the presumption of service; it is now for HMCTS, as the body asserting that service occurred, to prove that the claim pack was in fact printed and entered into the postal system. It is not enough for them to recite CPR 6.26 and say “we always post what we print”. If they want the court to maintain the presumption, they should produce real evidence: print logs showing that this specific claim pack was generated on the stated date, batch records showing it was enveloped and handed to Royal Mail, or some other concrete proof. A generic statement that “our process is to print and post” does not deal with the specific anomaly in your case.
You then join the dots. You invite the judge to find, on the balance of probabilities, that HMCTS cannot actually prove that this particular claim pack was printed and posted correctly. The only hard evidence in front of the court is: your sworn denial of receipt; the bizarre double-sided judgment and cover letter; the absence of any earlier letters; and your prompt reaction once you knew of the claim. Against that, HMCTS have nothing beyond a standard presumption and a vague “Xerox room error” explanation which does not sit with the documents. In that situation, you argue that the presumption of delivery has been displaced and that service has not been proved. If service has not been proved, the default judgment was wrongly entered and must be set aside.
You can make the same point in your HMCTS complaint and later to the Ombudsman. You state that once you raised a specific, evidenced challenge to service, HMCTS were under a duty to look at the actual system records for your case and provide proof that your claim pack was printed and entered into the post. Instead, they simply asserted “it was sent” and dismissed the obvious evidence of a printing or IT fault. That failure to properly test their own presumption and to produce any supporting evidence is itself maladministration.
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