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#Post#: 97980--------------------------------------------------
Re: National Parking Control Group Ltd- DCB Legal Ltd (Judgement
for Claimant)
DIR By: b789
Date: November 13, 2025, 7:41 am
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You can just pay the CCJ. If it is paid within 30 days, it is
expunged from the record and there is nothing on your credit
file.
However, I would still lodge a formal complaint to HMCTS and get
your MP involved. This is not the first time this has happened
and the HMCTS are renowned for trying to deny anything is wrong
with their IT system.
I would put them to strict proof that the original claim was
actually posted. Their presumption of delivery can be rebutted
and then they are required to evidence that it was actually
posted.
#Post#: 98051--------------------------------------------------
Re: National Parking Control Group Ltd- DCB Legal Ltd (Judgement
for Claimant)
DIR By: H-M3
Date: November 13, 2025, 2:24 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Sorry are you saying there is no challenge on this case :'( but
to just pay?
Thanks
#Post#: 98060--------------------------------------------------
Re: National Parking Control Group Ltd- DCB Legal Ltd (Judgement
for Claimant)
DIR By: b789
Date: November 13, 2025, 4:30 pm
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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 month
[indent]1. 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.[/indent]
Option 2 – Apply to set aside the CCJ (N244, fee £313)
[indent]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.[/indent]
How to decide
If 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 1
You 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 2
If 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 3
If 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 Ombudsman
You 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
missing
HTML https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwye2q00k51o
You 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.
#Post#: 98070--------------------------------------------------
Re: National Parking Control Group Ltd- DCB Legal Ltd (Judgement
for Claimant)
DIR By: H-M3
Date: November 13, 2025, 5:50 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Thanks b789! Very detailed and informative much appreciated. I
will speak to the victim and see what they want to do. If it was
me I will probably pay the n244 and battle it.
#Post#: 98091--------------------------------------------------
Re: National Parking Control Group Ltd- DCB Legal Ltd (Judgement
for Claimant)
DIR By: b789
Date: November 14, 2025, 3:07 am
---------------------------------------------------------
I would too. However, everyone is different. I have today
emailed the BBC reporters to ask them to investigate this issue
as I believe it is part of the scandal they uncovered. I'll
report back if I hear from them.
Another article about this today:
Courts boss apologises for not escalating IT bug to ministers
sooner
HTML https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgr4745p94lo
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