Enforcing a County Court Judgment - Tricky Defendant

bumblebee15

For brevity, I took my ex-landlord to court for non-protection of deposit and failure to serve prescribed info. the court awarded me 3X my deposit plus costs. My ex-LL is a tricky customer and shady - allowing friends to use the rest of the property for illegal activities like drugs, registering cars to the address to evade fines etc. He also has been prosecuted by the council, for not having proper gas/electricity safety, harassing former tenants etc and has a history of saying he didn't get letters to his home address.

He is now saying that he is going to apply to have the judgment set aside because he never submitted a defence and claims he never got any court papers telling him about the case after the claim form was received and he completed an acknowledgment of service. He is a bare faced liar but now I am going to have to enforce it. I checked with the court and they gave me the dates that all of the notifications were sent out and they were all sent to his home address. He owns about 6 properties and lives off the rents so doesn't work. 

The court claim was under the Part 8 rules so no default judgment was allowed. I had to go to court and make my case to the judge. The defendant did not bother to turn up, I suspect because he couldn't be bothered to travel 6 miles to the court!  I have done property title register searches and have the info. I now when the rents go into his account and on which days. What is the best way to go after the money? Can anyone tell me about high court enforcement officers? If anyone has experience, please share. I don't have money for solicitors and it is not covered by legal aid.

fatbelly

The court will make a decision on his setaside application. If he acknowledged service then he won't get it.

In the meantime you have a judgement to enforce. I assume what you want is for him to pay up. Personally I wouldn't bother with HCEOs as they are easy to block if you know how, and he probably does.

As you know his bank account I would go for a TPDO

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/form-n349-application-for-third-party-debt-order

bumblebee15

fatbelly said:

The court will make a decision on his setaside application. If he acknowledged service then he won't get it.

In the meantime you have a judgement to enforce. I assume what you want is for him to pay up. Personally I wouldn't bother with HCEOs as they are easy to block if you know how, and he probably does.

As you know his bank account I would go for a TPDO

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/form-n349-application-for-third-party-debt-order

Thank you for replying. Yes, they did acknowledge the service of the claim and wrote back to the court saying they would defend but never submitted any defence and never turned up on the day. My concern is the court changed the venue the afternoon before the hearing though they had sent a notification of hearing for the original venue a week before. I was emailed but I don't know how the court communicated that to him. I suppose that technically, they knew a court case was pending and could have contacted the court but not sure how this last minute change would affect things?