My elderly Mother has received a letter from DCBL informing her that a CCJ for £284.70 has been entered against her on 4/11/2025 with 1 month to pay, so the deadline being this Thursday 4/12/2025. It seems that she has received letters from them before demanding £170 but she disregarded them thinking that they were some sort of scam. However, this new letter regarding the CCJ only arrived on Wednesday even though it was dated weeks ago (obvious pressure tactics). I have ascertained that she never received any letters from CPPlus, the parking company, and that at the time of the 'offence', her V5C was not updated to her new address as she had recently moved, so she never even had the chance to pay the original fine. I realise it's a long shot now, but is there anything that can be done before this CCJ is set in stone? Thankyou for your attention.
You mention that she received some letters but disregarded them... We could do with seeing exactly what letters she received... I.e has she received and ignored a claim form from the court, for example.
That link does not work. However, the most important question is whether the N1SDT Claim Form was received at the address where your mother lives? We are not asking about the PCN or any reminders or debt recovery letters. All we need to know is whether the actual Claim Form which would have been in a letter from HMCTS was received.
Once you answer that question, we can then advise on how to proceed.
Sorry, I dont know how to upload photos on here. Yes, there is a N1SDT among the paperwork dated 13th October. Requesting £262.32.
Your mum is in this position because she received a proper County Court claim form at her current address and chose not to respond to it. When a defendant ignores a correctly served claim, the court is obliged to enter judgment in default. That is exactly what has happened here.
Because the claim form was served at the right address and there was simply no response, there is no way to use CPR 13.2. That rule only helps where the court has entered judgment “wrongly” – for example, if the claim was never served, was served at the wrong address, or a defence or acknowledgment had been filed and ignored. None of that applies here. Service was good, no response was filed, so the judgment is procedurally sound.
The only possible route in theory would be CPR 13.3, which is a discretionary set aside. To get anywhere under 13.3 your mum would have to show both that she acted promptly once she knew about the judgment, and that she has a real prospect of successfully defending the original parking claim (or some other strong reason why the judgment should be set aside). Even if, on paper, she could clear that hurdle, the court fee for the application is £313. On a low value private parking claim, and especially when the defendant has simply ignored paperwork, it is very unlikely that the judge would order the claimant to refund that £313 even if the claim later failed or was discontinued. So in pure money terms, a set aside application would mean gambling £313 on a fairly thin chance, with no guaranteed recovery of that fee.
By contrast, paying the judgment now simply closes the whole thing down. The judgment was entered on 4 November 2025. If the full amount of the judgment is paid within one calendar month, i.e. by 4 December 2025 (tomorrow!), you can then apply for the judgment to be removed from the register altogether. If you pay in full by tomorrow’s deadline, and then get the court to mark it as cancelled, it should disappear from your mum’s credit file as if it was never there. That is the only “clean” outcome that still exists.
If the judgment is not paid in full by tomorrow, it will sit on her credit file for six years. Even if she pays it later, it will only be marked as “satisfied”, not removed. At that point the question becomes very practical: does your mum actually need a clean credit record for anything over the next few years? Will she need new credit, a new tenancy, a remortgage, a mobile phone contract, or insurance policies that involve a credit check? If the answer is yes, or even “probably”, then the safest thing to do is to get the judgment paid in full now and then apply to have it removed.
If, on the other hand, she is not going to seek any new credit, does not intend to move, remortgage or take out new contracts that rely on credit checks, she may decide that she can live with a CCJ sitting on her file until it drops off after six years. It is not a great position to be in, but for some elderly people who have no borrowing plans left, it is not the end of the world.
In terms of enforcement, the judgment is under £600, so it cannot be transferred up for High Court enforcement. County Court bailiffs are technically possible, but for small private parking debts they are not commonly used because they are slow and rarely cost-effective for the claimant. That does not mean there is zero enforcement risk, but it is not the same as having High Court Enforcement Officers turning up.
So the stark position is this: there is no automatic right to set aside, and a discretionary set aside would cost £313 with no realistic prospect of getting that back. The cheapest and most certain option, if your mum cares about her credit record, is to pay the judgment in full by tomorrow and then arrange for it to be removed from the register. If she genuinely does not care about the credit impact and has no foreseeable need for credit or contracts that rely on credit checks, she can choose to leave it, accept that the CCJ will stay on file for six years, and treat it as a lesson in why court papers must never be ignored.
I thought as much, especially after finding the court papers yesterday. It's partly my fault for leaving it so long to deal with. I've paid it now anyway. No, she's not really interested in credit at her time of life but she does live in privately rented accommodation which I know can be a problem having a CCJ should she ever need to move. If it were thousands, it might be a different story, but for £280 it's not worth spoiling her good credit. It's just a case of 'chalk it up' and learn from it should it ever happen again. I appreciate your time and expertise looking into this. Thankyou.
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