Notice about CCJ not being statute barred

mrchimps

Hello. I'm hoping someone can offer some advice.

I have been getting letters and phone calls recently from Lowells regarding a debt with lloyds Tsb. I had no idea about it and checked my credit record to see nothing about it.
As I did have an old lloyds tsb account years ago I thought it might be to do with that although i'm not sure what for and being nothing on my credit file I sent them the Statute barred letter.

Today I had this back:

----------------------

We can advise your account is not statute barred under the Limitation Act 1980.

This is because litigation action has already taken place on the account.

There is a County Court Judgment (CCJ) held in relation to this account, dated the 06/08/14. The court case number is A------. As the CCJ is now over 6 years old, this would now have expired. This means that it will have been removed from any credit file reporting and the public registry.

Please note that our postal address has changed, any post sent to our previous addresses will no longer be forwarded to Lowell. Please find our up-to-date contact details below.

Lowell Financial Ltd

PO Box 13079

Harlow

CM20 9TE

When you are ready to set an affordable arrangement in place, you can visit our website https://lowell.co.uk/ and login to manage your account online. If you have any difficulty online, you can call us on 0333 556 5733 for help.

You can provide this information by post or email us at post@lowellgroup.co.uk. You can also speak to us on 0333 556 5730 and we’ll be happy to help.

I’ve put your account on hold for 30 days to allow time for you to get back to us. If we don’t hear from you in that time, contact will resume.

You can get free confidential advice from a number of independent organisations including:  

StepChange Debt Charity 0800 138 1111 www.stepchange.org

National Debtline 0808 808 4000 www.nationaldebtline.org

Kind regards

Lowell Customer Team

------------------

If this is 6 years old why are they now chasing? Do I have any comeback to this?

Any help appreciated.

DullGreyGuy

Statute of limitation sets the time limit to bring court action, clearly it doesn't apply to things that have already gone to court by definition. 

CCJs never legally expire, but they drop off the public register after 6 years. However a claimant needs the courts permission to continue enforcement action after 6 years and needs a strong argument as to why they require it rather than having collected it within the 6 years. Matters are slightly different if they already have gotten a charge order or debt order.

DE_612183

Have you asked them for specific details about what the debt relates to?

Does the date in 2014 ring any bells with you - assuming that if that is the court date then the debt would have been incurred before that?

Anyway as DGG says they probably can't get very far with it apart from being annoying.

I'd respond back and say you don't know what it is so will not pay, and what do they intend to do about it?

sourcrates

The limitation act does apply to CCJ`s, just not section 5, Section 24 being the relevant legislation sets out the limitation period for judgements, which is 6 years-

24Time limit for actions to enforce judgments.

(1)An action shall not be brought upon any judgment after the expiration of six years from the date on which the judgment became enforceable.

(2)No arrears of interest in respect of any judgment debt shall be recovered after the expiration of six years from the date on which the interest became due.

Just to further clarify, any extension to the enforcement period must be applied for prior to the expiration of the initial 6 year time frame, once those 6 years have expired, its too late.

Lowell are hopelessly out of time with this, and can`t now do anything by way of enforcement action, I suspect they are hoping you do not realise this.

mrchimps

Thanks for the replies.

I honestly have no idea. I have kept contact with them to a minimum. They ring I answer they try and take me through security and I say I'm not going to give personal information on the phone. But if they have a CCJ it must be me. I think the debt has been passed around a bit and Lowells just got it.

Date doesn't stand out. Although I have had a couple of other CCJ's in the past which I paid and settled, so I cant see why I wouldn't have dealt with it.

No charging order or debt order with it.

mrchimps

sourcrates said:

The limitation act does apply to CCJ`s, just not section 5, Section 24 being the relevant legislation sets out the limitation period for judgements, which is 6 years-

24Time limit for actions to enforce judgments.

(1)An action shall not be brought upon any judgment after the expiration of six years from the date on which the judgment became enforceable.

(2)No arrears of interest in respect of any judgment debt shall be recovered after the expiration of six years from the date on which the interest became due.

Just to further clarify, any extension to the enforcement period must be applied for prior to the expiration of the initial 6 year time frame, once those 6 years have expired, its too late.

Lowell are hopelessly out of time with this, and can`t now do anything by way of enforcement action, I suspect they are hoping you do not realise this.

This is very interesting. Thank you.

Should I go back to them stating this or simply ignore them?

sourcrates

mrchimps said:

Thanks for the replies.

I honestly have no idea. I have kept contact with them to a minimum. But if they have a CCJ it must be me. 

Not necessarily, the vast majority of judgements are granted "by default" which means the respondent did not reply to the initial court papers, which is likely what happened here, I don`t know, its all speculation, I doubt Lowell will be anymore forthcoming.

Basically all they can do is ask you to pay, nothing more, if you write back, tell them they are out of time to enforce the judgement, and that the debt was not yours anyway, so you will not be paying them anything, and you will not discuss the matter further.

Grumpelstiltskin

Don't phone  them under any circumstances, it just encourages them.

As Sourcrates says send them a letter by snail mail, don't bother sending it signed for just normal post.

RAS

If you search for Lowell in this section of the forum, you'll find lots of threads this year in which Lowell claim to have a old CCJ on a statute barred debt. They may have bought a batch of redundant debts at a bargain basement price in the hope that they can get someone with the right name to pay up. If they get one in a hundred, they can probably make a profit.

mrchimps

Thanks for all the replies. Will do some digging and get something in paper to send to them.

fatbelly

Did you ever check your credit file prior to Aug 2020?

Was there a ccj showing?

You could try running the date and court reference past the County Court Business Centre but they are very difficult to get a reply from these days