CCJ Advice

dalc87

Hi all, I hope someone can give me some advice on an issue I have with a CCJ.

It all started about 7 years ago when I was unemployed due to an accident at work. I moved into a ground floor flat as I had trouble walking up stairs and being on income support at the time I applied for a Community Care Grant to adapt my flat. I was awarded the money (or so I thought).

For those of you that don't know a CCG is a government grant to help the vulnerable with furnishing costs etc and does not need to be paud back.

Thankfully I made a full recovery, turned my life around and am now fit, healthy and contributing to society again. About 6 months ago I received a letter from the DWP informing me that I owed them money from a Budgeting Loan. I disputed this as I had never claimed for a budgeting loan and I asked for proof. They sent me a letter which basically just said that I owed them money and what internal box had been ticked to say what I wanted the money for. I said that the dates seemed similar to the time I had my CCG and that maybe they were mistaken. To cut a long story short they said I never had a CCG and that maybe my CCG claim was rejected but that I was offered the money as a BL (which I disputed). Letters went back and forth for a while and then they stopped for about 10 weeks. The next letter I had was from the County Court informing me of a successful judgement against me.
I tried to speak with the DWP directly and got through to a helpful woman that said even if they had made the mistake and even if I had letters to prove it that the systems internally said I owed money and that DWP would continue to chase me for it and now that they had the courts involved that they wouldn't drop it.

Although I felt the money was not owed I offered to pay it back in instalments which they accepted.

I recently applied for a business loan and was rejected because of a low credit score. My credit had been excellent for 4+ years so I was astounded. Upon further checks it seems that I have a CCJ pertaining to the DWP money.

I've spoken with Trust Online and they said that as I never had a summons that I should be able to have the CCJ set aside and removed from my credit report. I spoke with the Court directly and the woman there (who had a real attitude problem) said that I could pay for the judge to review it but that they wouldn't remove it because I 'admitted' to the debt so therefore knew about it.

I explained that I did not know about the "debt" for years and that when it was put to me I disputed it and that my dealings were with the DWP directly until I received a letter from the court explaining that judgement had been passed against me. I decided to pay the money off as it wasn't a grand sum (£350) and that it was easier to pay it off in small instalments and be disgruntled about it rather than fight the cause and lose which DWP informed me would happen no matter what I brought to the table. She said that this counts as admittance and that even though I never received a summons that this is grounds to dismiss my claim for the CCJ to be set aside.

Can anyone shed any light on this? Should I spend the £80 to have it reviewed?

I don't like the thought of having a CCJ over a debt I never owed nor ever had the chance to dispute in court as I never had a summons giving me a bad credit rating for the next 6 years.

If I can't even get a small £2000 loan from my bank for my business how the hell am I ever going to get a mortgage? All of my credit cards have all written to me reducing my credit limits (not a big problem as I have £0 credit card debt but the fact that it's not there any more makes things difficult).

Any help/advice much appreciated.

Thrugelmir

The Court office would have issued the summons. To have received all other correspondence other the summons would not be convincing to a judge.

As in all cases of no defence. The judge will need to be satisfied that all reasonable steps were taken to resolve the issue, and that notification was given of the intention of taking court action.