CCJ vs CP Plus Ltd (DCBL) Applying for Set-Aside

Coupon-mad

Even with consent the fee is £147

No it isn't.

There is no fee if both parties agree. This is in the CPRs. Here's an example:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81656966/#Comment_81656966

NahkoMed

It's a real shame that when I called the CNBC last month, that's not what they told me. I think it's now too late for an adjournment, the hearing is next week.

Coupon-mad

NahkoMed said:

Hi again all,

I received the Witness statement from the DCBL rep for the hearing next week and I've decided to do a skeleton argument because they're claiming not to have received any evidence that I wasn't resident. The court did lose my application at least twice on the way here, so maybe they're not lying... but I doubt it!

They also claim to have done a trace 6 days before serving the claim in mid January, which I'm saying is impossible since I 100% updated everything you could wish for in December when I moved. They've provided no evidence. Is it, in fact, possible for a trace to return the old address still?

Finally, I'm obviously planning to attend in person, but the hearing is 3 days before the due date of my second child, so I may physically not be able to. Any advice about that other than what I've done below? After everything I've been through I was absolutely not prepared to try to apply for an adjournment, with additional £313 fee.

Here's my skeleton argument, referencing VCL vs Carr - I'll attach a transcript. Any other feedback greatfully recieved, and thanks to @Brightonrock123 for the skeleton of the skeleton.

Case number

___________________________________

SKELETON ARGUMENT
___________________________________


1. Introduction

1.1 This skeleton argument is submitted in support of the Defendant’s application to set aside the default judgment dated xxxxxxx pursuant to CPR 13.2 and/or CPR 13.3, and to strike out the claim.

1.2 The date of this hearing falls three days before the due date of my second child. In the event that I am unable to attend the hearing in person in order to attend the birth, I will notify the court of the same. Please accept these written arguments, and my witness statement, in my defence if this should happen.

1.3 The Defendant contends that:

- The claim was not properly served in accordance with CPR 6.9, as it was sent to an address where the Defendant no longer resided, in breach of the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) and the Joint Professional Code of Practice to which the Claimant is obliged to adhere.

2. LEGAL BASIS FOR THE APPLICATION

2.1 Improper Service (CPR 13.2)

2.1.1 The court must set aside the judgment if it was not properly served in accordance with CPR 6.9, which requires that an individual be served at their “usual or last known residence.”

2.1.2 The claim was sent to xxxxxxx, an address where the Defendant no longer resided at the time of service. The Defendant moved to his current address at xxxxxxxx on 6th December, as evidenced by his tenancy agreement and council tax demand, submitted to the court as part of the initial application bundle on 1st May 2025, and again by email on 25th September.
2.1.3 In their witness statement, the Claimant’s representative claims that the defendant “…has failed to provide any supporting evidence to demonstrate that they were no longer residing at the address at the material time.” For the avoidance of doubt, the Defendant today re-attaches this evidence, along with his original witness statement which clearly states the same.

2.1.4 The Claimant failed to take reasonable steps to verify the Defendant’s current address, as required by CPR 6.9(3) and the BPA Code of Practice 24.1c. The Claimant relies upon a written notification of address for service they received in November 2023, more than a year before the claim was issued.
2.1.5 Further, the Representative claims that “…the Claimant took additional steps to locate the Defendant by conducting traces on 13/03/2024, 29/05/2024, 11/01/2025” but has failed to provide any evidence of this. The Defendant would, moreover, challenge him to do so, being certain that any trace conducted in January of this year would have, in fact, pointed to his current address since he diligently updated his details with Bank, DVLA, local authority, utility companies and letting agency as soon as he moved in December. 
2.1.4 This failure to ensure proper service mirrors the principles established in VCS Ltd v Carr (CA-2024-001179, Court of Appeal, 4 March 2025), where the court held that claimants must take reasonable steps to ensure service is effective. The court emphasised that serving a claim at an outdated address, without reasonable diligence, renders the judgment void. Initial findings from the Court of Appeal hearing are provided as an appendix for the court’s reference.

2.2 Discretionary Set Aside (CPR 13.3)

2.2.1 If the court finds that, despite the wealth of evidence and precedent presented to the contrary, the claim was in fact properly served, the Judgment must still be set aside in accordance with CPR 13.3 because the following conditions are met: 
2.2.2 The defendant has a real prospect of defending the claim. As the below precedents show, the particulars of claim must specify the conduct constituting the breach, which was not done in this case. 
2.2.3 There are other “good reasons” to do so: The Claimant ignored initial approaches by the Defendant to resolve the matter well in advance of court proceedings, ignored very reasonable questions from the Defendant during the pre-action period, waited more than a year after sending the Letter of Claim to file a claim with the court and finally served that claim to an address where the Defendant could have no knowledge of it, and hence no opportunity to defend. 
2.2.4 The Defendant has applied promptly for a set-aside: He was initially made aware of the Judgment in a letter from DCB Ltd (a debt collection agency) at his current address on 11th April 2025, notified the Claimant of his intention to apply for set aside on 14th April 2025 and submitted an application for set-aside to the court after an waiting out the notice period provided to the Claimant, on 1st May 2025.
2.2.5 In making the decision to set-aside, the court should consider the overriding objective. Since the Defendant was not in receipt of the Claim Form or Particulars of the Claim, he has had no opportunity to defend it, and should, at the very least, be offered an opportunity to do so.
 

3. JUDICIAL PRECEDENTS

3.1 VCS v Carr (CA-2024-001179, Court of Appeal, 4 March 2025) 

3.1.1 The Court of Appeal in VCS Ltd v Carr held that claimants must take reasonable steps to ensure service is effective. The court emphasised that serving a claim at an outdated address, without reasonable diligence, renders the judgment void.
3.1.2 The court also highlighted the importance of the overriding objective, which requires the court to consider the justice of the case. The Defendant in this case was unable to defend the claim due to improper service, and the judgment should be set aside to avoid injustice.
3.1.3 The initial findings from the Court of Appeal hearing is provided as an appendix for the court’s reference.

3.2 Civil Enforcement Ltd v Chan (Luton County Court, August 2023)

3.2.1 In CEL v Chan, the court struck out a claim due to the Claimant’s failure to comply with CPR 16.4 and Practice Direction 16.7.5. The court held that the particulars of claim must specify the conduct constituting the breach, which was not done in that case. A transcript is provided in the Defendant’s original exhibits pack at XX-02.

3.2.2 Similarly, in this case, the Claimant has failed to provide sufficient details of the alleged breach, rendering the claim defective and liable to be struck out.

3.3 CPMS Ltd v Akande (Manchester County Court, May 2024)

3.3.1 In CPMS v Akande, the court dismissed a parking claim due to the Claimant’s failure to specify the nature of the breach in the particulars of claim. The court held that the Defendant must be able to understand the case against them, which was not possible in that case.

3.3.2 The same applies here. The Claimant has failed to specify the nature of the alleged breach in the PoC, and the claim should be struck out.
 
4. RELIEF SOUGHT

4.1 The Defendant respectfully requests the court to:

a. Set aside the default judgment dated 2nd February 2025, as it was not correctly served at the Defendant’s current address.

b. Strike out the claim for failing to comply with CPR 16.4 and Practice Direction 16.7.5 or, in the alternative, as expired.

c. Order the Claimant to pay the Defendant’s costs, including £313 for the fee of making this application
6. CONCLUSION

6.1 The Defendant respectfully submits that the default judgment should be set aside due to improper service, and the claim should be struck out as it is without merit and fails to comply with the CPR.

 

DATED: 1 October 2025

SIGNED: 

DEFENDANT

It's Friday. Get it in by email today.

And in the covering email reiterate the due date of the baby and say, if on the day of the hearing you are unable to attend due to the baby's birth you kindly ask for the court's understanding and to refer to the binding case law of VCS v Carr - which was also about an improperly served claim - and grant the application and the £313 N244 fee cost to be paid by the Claimant, with the claim dismissed. 

If you have an hour to work on the skelly, add the new case law and some words about Mazur & ors v Speechlys. See the thread all about it, as your unserved claim form wasn't even signed by a solicitor!

Make sure your skelly includes footnote links to all the case law transcripts.

And attach proof of paying the £313 fee.

NahkoMed

Will do, thank you

NahkoMed

So I think it's fair to say that the hearing did not go well.

I did get the set-aside, but only on the condition that I pay them what they say I owe, plus their expenses. £458 in total, on top of the £313 I paid for the pleasure of having my day in court.

I probably didn't do a tremendous job of presenting my case - I got really wrong-footed by the fact that the Judge had literally no patience whatsoever for any of the points I legitimately raised, which was very stressful, but even in spite of that I do think I made my case as best I could.

A few quotes (from memory) that give a flavour of how it was:

Judge: On what grounds are you applying for a set-aside?

Me: That the claim form was improperly served at an address at which I no longer resided, and hadn't resided for more than a month.

Judge: Right... anything else because that's not much to go on.

Me: Well Ma'am the case that I present in my Witness Statement and Skeleton argument, VCS vs Carr deals with a very similar situation in which the Justices found in favour of the defendant

Judge: *Scans the transcript that I hand her * This seems to be more to do with the legitimacy of the claim, I'm not conviced.

_____

Judge: Mr ______ (Advocate for the Claimant) tells me that you wrote to them confirming your address as _____ (old address), how can this be improper service? If this were true people could just move to avoid litigation!

Me: Well Ma'am, CPR 6.9 states that "where there is reason to believe that a person's address for service may have changed" then the claimant must take reasonable steps to ascertain the defendant's current address."

Judge: And what "reason to believe" was there in this case?

Me: That more than a year had passed between the time I confirmed this address and the claim being served there.

Judge: Why is this reason to believe that you might have moved?

Me: Because people move house from time to time

Judge: No I don't accept that.

I could defintely have done a better job with VCS vs Carr at this point, or in the previous one, but honestly, I hadn't counted on her not accepting at all that there was anything wrong with serving a form to an outdated address and that there wasn't even any "reason to believe" that I might have moved. I felt really panicked, actually.

______

Judge: What is your defence to the claim?

Me: that the Particulars of Claim submitted to the court were not sufficient to understand the nature of the breach of terms and conditions.

Judge: *Reads the PoC* Well it seems fine to me

Me: In the 2 cases I present here (CEL v Chan and CPMS vs Akande) the Judges found that it was not sufficient to state a general "breach of terms and conditions", that there are many different ways that terms and conditions can be breached (parking in the wrong place, not parking properly in a bay, overstaying, etc) and that the PoC must state which of these occurred.

Judge: I'm not interested in other people's cases, I'm interested in this case.

_______

Judge: Do you realise that if I strike out this claim today it will come back again, you will very likely lose, and you will be liable for all the claimant's costs at that time?

Me: I would be very willing to defend this claim Ma'am, I just want the opportunity to do so, which I've so far been denied

Judge: This is your opportunity to defend it! What is your defence?!

Me: *Repeats defence*

Judge: Further exasperation

She then led me through a rather humiliating series of questions like: "did you park there?" (yes), "were there signs saying you had to pay" (I imagine so but I don't recall), "well Mr ____ has today submitted some photos of signs that are presumably there... did you pay?!" (to be honest I don't remember - it was a really long time ago - but I think I would have tried to, maybe it didn't go through...?) "so you didn't pay then?" 

Throughout all that I kept saying that this kind of thing wasn't the substance of my defence and that the cases I'd brought really did show I had a reasonable prospect of defending the claim, but she called it "smoke and mirrors". I pointed out that signs can change, that in many of these cases it turns out that the signs don't comply with BPA regulations... but again... this wasn't the substance of my defence today etc etc. She brushed it aside.

She also brushed aside the fact that I'd not been given an opportunity to defend the claim since I was never in receipt of it, along with the conduct of the claimant in breaking off the pre-action correspondance and then waiting more than a year to submit the claim, all of which I repeated more than once.

In the end, she practically told me to "just admit that you made a mistake, and that you don't want a CCJ against your name, and I'll get rid of it for you." I didn't do this, but I did take the only option she offered me which was to pay in exchange for a set-aside. She said (and got the claimant's advocate to agree) that she was "bending over backwards" for me in even doing this.

All in all a really long, difficult, anxious, humiliating and expensive experience. Kind of wish I'd just paid the £60 when they asked for it in 2022.

That said, I still feel extremely grateful to everyone on here who's helped me both directly and indirectly. Going through this has certainly made me stronger, wiser and more humble, and I never would have had the courage to try if it hadn't been for you. This is a great community doing tremendous work against a huge injustice in our society, I'm just sorry it didn't work out for me.

Nellymoser

 😥 it didn't work out for you, sounds like you got a nasty b*tch of a judge whose opinions are set in stone.

1505grandad

As above  -  which Court?

Le_Kirk

NahkoMed said:

So I think it's fair to say that the hearing did not go well.

There needs to be a sympathy button, rather than a thanks button!  I echo what @Nellymoser wrote.

NahkoMed

1505grandad said:

As above  -  which Court?

Mold... which is under Wrexham

NahkoMed

Le_Kirk said:

NahkoMed said:

So I think it's fair to say that the hearing did not go well.

There needs to be a sympathy button, rather than a thanks button!  I echo what @Nellymoser wrote.

Thank you all, yes it's sad that so much hangs on one person's opinion