Owed Money. Small Claim or Winding-up Order?

stone7

Hi

To cut a long story a short, I'm owed around £10k for works carried out as a sub-contractor on numerous jobs. The oldest unpaid raised invoice was dated August 2012 even though the payment terms on purchase orders state 30 days.

I've now run out of patience and am wondering whether to try to recover the money via the Small Claims route or if petitioning with a winding-up order would prove more effective.

TIA.

BobQ

Small Claims Court is sensible if you can easily prove your case with evidence and you can locate the person who owes you the money. Fill the forms out on line and pay about £250 and see what the debtor does.

Might be more complicated if the debtor has traded under different names of limited companies. Then you need to make the claim (or claims) against the right company assuming it still trades and is not already defunct.

Wywth

stone7 wrote: »

Hi

To cut a long story a short, I'm owed around £10k for works carried out as a sub-contractor on numerous jobs. The oldest unpaid raised invoice was dated August 2012 even though the payment terms on purchase orders state 30 days.

I've now run out of patience and am wondering whether to try to recover the money via the Small Claims route or if petitioning with a winding-up order would prove more effective.

TIA.

About £10k?

Is that more than £10k or less than £10k?
Small claims limit is £10k in England & Wales (less in other UK territories)

Wywth

Why would you wind them up?

If they owe say £100k to 10 creditors, you'll only see £1k for your time, effort & money (assuming all creditors are of equal standing)

If you make a claim and win, you are entitled to full amount of claim plus court costs.

cherylsurrey

Small claims court if under £10,000, or try a debt collection agency, in my last job I used one to collect debts, they had a very high success rate in collecting money, sometimes without even going to court and took a lot of the hassle out of it for me. They charged a very reasonable fee but it was well worth it.

DJBenson

http://www.safe-collections.com/

These guys have a really good reputation for delivering results. There's loads of advice on "dunning" over on the Contractor UK forums.

Brassedoff

Go to court, win and send in the HCEO. For 10K I would only threaten as there are others who will be owed money.

Lessons learned, but next time a sub contract with T&C's from the contractors website has a nice clause about directors agree the performance of the business.

macman

Small claims track will be the cheapest route as long as it's under £10K. But a winding up order will probably prove more intimidating if there is a queue of creditors..
Before you consider either option-does the company have any assets? If they don't, neither method will be worthwhile.