Civil Enforcement Ltd Offer Letter to Set Aside CCJ With Consent - After My N244 submission to Court

Alpha_23

Firstly thanks to everyone for offering great and helpful advice on these forums, I always refer these whenever I have a parking issue and it helps massively. However, today I find myself stuck on what course of action is best to do next.

I recently got a surprise DCBL debt collection letter and found out that I had a CCJ on my credit file with default Judgement made against me in Jan '22 pertaining to a PCN I had no idea about dated 23rd July 2019. I moved house just before the date of this alleged incident on the 11th of July 2019 but the PCN along with all preceding parking letters and Court correspondence was sent to my old address. I've followed all the helpful advice from the Newbies thread and several other threads I could find and filed an N244 Application to the County Court to Set Aside the CCJ Without Consent and submitted all the relevant corresponding documents. I was recently made redundant so did not pay for the application and so I didn't seek to claim back any costs from CEL in my draft order.

Yesterday I received this Offer Letter to pay £95 for support to Set Aside CCJ With Consent from CEL via email. In the threads I looked at so far I couldn't see what the next best course of action for someone in my position would be. Should I pay the £95? Should I just ignore this letter? Should I respond with a 'Counter Offer' of a reduced amount? Should I still try to defend myself in Court Without Consent?

 I just think it's a bit unfair that I didn't get the chance to defend myself when the first PCN letter was sent to my old address in 2019, I think I could have easily got it cancelled back at the time, but now they want me to pay £95 inc their own admin costs without giving me the chance to defend the original alleged parking incident.

(As a side note, in the letter below they state "We sent a letter before action to the new address, however, we did not receive any response". This is an outright lie, and they did not send me anything at all to my new address, the only thing I've received about this whole case is the recent DCBL debt collection letter which sparked this whole thing off).

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated thank you.

Coupon-mad

Ignore the consent order. It is their usual attempt to wriggle out of being ordered to pay your £275 costs.

(As a side note, in the letter below they state "We sent a letter before action to the new address, however, we did not receive any response". This is an outright lie, and they did not send me anything at all to my new address,

Send them a SAR and you will see either way. Ask for all letters, all photos held and evidence of any soft trace undertaken and when (actual evidence of it, not a file note).

Also - in case CEL mock up a LBC - send DCB a SAR and ask specifically for evidence of exactly which address was on the file when CEL passed the case to them (and when that was) when the new address was traced (a copy of the soft trace result, showing the date requested and received).

KeithP

That paragraph looks a bit suspect.

So they "undertook an address trace which confirmed that you were at the address which the Claim and Judgment were issued to", did they?

If they did that at any time after the parking event, then surely your current address would've been returned by any trace.

After they (allegedly) sent a Letter Before Action to the new address and received no response, what did they do next?
That's an easy question to answer... they rubbed their hands with glee and rushed to file a Claim at the old address where they definitely knew they would get no response - because their trace had already shown them that it was an out of date address.

Trainerman

Following on from @KeithP above and @Coupon-mad, file that SAR and pull out the lies. They are saying (I think) that they did a trace, found a new address but because there was "no response" went back to the old address, What response had they got from that.????

This is self evidently a stupid, disingenuous reply . Give 'em hell

Alpha_23

@Coupon-mad Thanks for your speedy and informative help!
I feel much more confident in ignoring the letter now and the SAR is such an excellent idea! I will get both sent over to CEL and their minions DCBL!

@KeithP They are definitely pulling out some dodgy tricks. When I moved I updated all my address records to my new address in 2019, so I'd love to see what they respond with to the SAR because the County Court told me they were provided with my old address and the judgement was made/sent there in Jan 2022 nearly 3 years later.

@Trainerman Yes I definitely plan to take this all the way now and bring 'em down! Thanks to you all of you for giving me the confidence boost I needed! 

KeithP

Alpha_23 said:

When I moved I updated all my address records to my new address in 2019...

Did you do that separately for both your driving licence and your vehicle's Registration Document(V5c)?

Many people either overlook the second of those or think there might be some joined up thinking at the DVLA and that the DVLA, when notified of an address change, they would change all their records. Doesn't happen.

Grizebeck

KeithP said:

Alpha_23 said:

When I moved I updated all my address records to my new address in 2019...

Did you do that separately for both your driving licence and your vehicle's Registration Document(V5c)?

Many people either overlook the second of those or think there might be some joined up thinking at the DVLA and that the DVLA, when notified of an address change, they would change all their records. Doesn't happen.

And it can be done online in minutes to

Alpha_23

KeithP said:

Alpha_23 said:

When I moved I updated all my address records to my new address in 2019...

Did you do that separately for both your driving licence and your vehicle's Registration Document(V5c)?

Many people either overlook the second of those or think there might be some joined up thinking at the DVLA and that the DVLA, when notified of an address change, they would change all their records. Doesn't happen.

Yeah i made sure I updated each separately and I also forwarded a copy of my V5C document showing my new address to the Court as supporting evidence in my N244 application.