Unfair Country Court Judgement. Advice please

Countessunfair

Could anyone advice me how to go about this please?
I am a doctor and was employed ads a locum in an NHS hospital.  About 2 months to the end of my contract( July 2021)  the NHS hospital sent me a letter saying I have been overpaid by £2950.00.
I called the finance department to discuss this. I then told them that I have huge amount of outstanding payment to be made to myself and if their record was correct they should deduct the money from my final pay. I also had discussions with my line manager about it, with whom I was dealing with in getting my claim forms sorted. I informed him of the overpayment and advised that it should be deducted from my money when the exact amount is known.
He said it was ok. I have email thread for these.
In January 2022 I was paid a huge amount of money about £18 ,000.00 after more than 50% tax.
I did nothing thinking that everything had been sorted. 
I was in my address for a further 1 year before I bought a house and moved.
 I left my address in September 2022. I got no correspondence from the hospital regarding any problem.
On 15th March 2024 I accidentally checked my credit report and found a CCJ on it.
I called the court and was told it was Countess of Chester hospital. 
I nearly passed out. I then called the hospital and they told me there was nothing they could do. By this time it was past the 30 days for me to pay and have no record. I was then forced to pay a total of about £3250.00
The bailiff  still turned up in my address but I told them I had paid.
They left.
I am really struggling to deal with this. The hospital failed to send any letter to my new address or even communicate with my by email or phone calls since we already discussed the over payment through those means. The hospital solely relied on sending letters to my old address without making any effort to check if I got any of the letters before going to court.
All doctors in UK are registered with the general medical council and will have their registered address with the council. 
I was also on the hospital bank staff till September 2023 and they made no contact with me for the problem.
I have already filled the N244 form but not sure if I should send that off.

Thank you in advance

Countessunfair

I meant to write County Court Judgement  (CCJ ) please!

sourcrates

You may have grounds for a set aside, its a lazy approach to just send court papers to the last known address, the courts demand a more pro-active response these days what with social media and credit reference agency files available to check, they demand more due diligence be done.

I assume the debt is now paid, and you just want this off your credit file, is that correct?

Set aside will cost you £275 with no guarantee of success, but you where unaware of how much you owed the Hospital despite asking, the court papers, and presumably the letter before action (to comply with civil procedure rules) were sent to an old address, so its likely you would meet the criteria.

tacpot12

I don't think there is any point sending off the N244. You haven't acted promptly. You knew there was a problem on the 15th March of this year, four months ago. You should have acted within four days! 

The court should turn down your application to set-aside the judgement, and you will lose another £275. If you had a good reason for the delay (such as you were ill in hospital yourself for much of this time) then you can include that on the N244 and this might improve your chances especailly if you have evidence to support your account. 

If you do decide to submit the N244, you need to make clear that on the N244 that your point of view is that the Hospital did not take reasonable care in trying to find your correct address. However, you might lose that argument if the court considers that there is no way for the Hospital to have known you had moved. If you know that the hospital did have your correct address as a result of being on the bank staff, you should mention this (but you are ingoring the fact that personal information such as your address isn't supposed to be widely shared across the orgnaisation, for data protection reasons, so it's not reasonable to expect HR to tell Finance you have moved. 

You could try to preempt the hospital's response to the court (as to whether they have any objection to the judgement being set-aside) by writing a polite letter to the legal team at the hospital asking if they would not object to the set-aside. This could help if the court is minded to allow your request and contacts the hospital for their view.

Sorry, but it's better to have a realistic expectation. 

fatbelly

There are three criteria for setaside.

You have a reason why you did not respond to the claim form.

Acting promptly is not defined in the legislation.

The problem you have is that you have no realistic defence and have already paid the debt. Setaside is where you were unable to lodge a defence and so the court gives you another go. That doesn't apply here

Devongardener

Whatever the errors in not sending notifications to your correct address, you must have received a payslip or calculation statement when your payment was made.
It should have been clear that the overpayment had not been deducted, as you had requested the deduction from the final payment, it was really your responsibility to check the calculations.     I know this doesn’t help you now but I hope you manage to get a set aside.

DullGreyGuy

To have the judgement set aside you have to justify why it should be set aside but also that you have a good prospect of winning the retrial. I am struggling to see what your defence is for you not owing the money. 

tacpot12

DullGreyGuy said:

To have the judgement set aside you have to justify why it should be set aside but also that you have a good prospect of winning the retrial. I am struggling to see what your defence is for you not owing the money. 

I'm not sure this is correct. While checking for the OP, the resource I found (Setting aside a CCJ | How to set aside a CCJ | National Debtline) suggested that it is sufficient not to have received the court papers for some unreasonable reason. You didn't need to have a chance of winning the case. StepChange also say the same: County Court Judgment. How To Set Aside A CCJ. StepChange 

sourcrates

tacpot12 said:

DullGreyGuy said:

To have the judgement set aside you have to justify why it should be set aside but also that you have a good prospect of winning the retrial. I am struggling to see what your defence is for you not owing the money. 

I'm not sure this is correct. While checking for the OP, the resource I found (Setting aside a CCJ | How to set aside a CCJ | National Debtline) suggested that it is sufficient not to have received the court papers for some unreasonable reason. You didn't need to have a chance of winning the case. StepChange also say the same: County Court Judgment. How To Set Aside A CCJ. StepChange 

It does state the court "might agree", which is the element of doubt the OP needs, it looks as if the Hospital may not have followed civil procedure rules by not sending an LBA, or if they did, it went to the old address, along with the claim form, but again, there is the element of doubt as to whether they were sent at all, the OP should play upon those facts.

If the OP can afford to lose the court fee, then it may be worth a punt to clear their file.

Granted there is always a chance that with the right judge, on a good day, and with a fair wind, it may be possible to get them to agree with you, but they have to also look at all of the facts.

Best chance of winning this will be if your hearing is at 430pm on a Friday afternoon.

DisabledDan

Countessunfair said:

Could anyone advice me how to go about this please?
I am a doctor and was employed ads a locum in an NHS hospital.  About 2 months to the end of my contract( July 2021)  the NHS hospital sent me a letter saying I have been overpaid by £2950.00.
I called the finance department to discuss this. I then told them that I have huge amount of outstanding payment to be made to myself and if their record was correct they should deduct the money from my final pay. I also had discussions with my line manager about it, with whom I was dealing with in getting my claim forms sorted. I informed him of the overpayment and advised that it should be deducted from my money when the exact amount is known.
He said it was ok. I have email thread for these.
In January 2022 I was paid a huge amount of money about £18 ,000.00 after more than 50% tax.
I did nothing thinking that everything had been sorted. 
I was in my address for a further 1 year before I bought a house and moved.
 I left my address in September 2022. I got no correspondence from the hospital regarding any problem.
On 15th March 2024 I accidentally checked my credit report and found a CCJ on it.
I called the court and was told it was Countess of Chester hospital. 
I nearly passed out. I then called the hospital and they told me there was nothing they could do. By this time it was past the 30 days for me to pay and have no record. I was then forced to pay a total of about £3250.00
The bailiff  still turned up in my address but I told them I had paid.
They left.
I am really struggling to deal with this. The hospital failed to send any letter to my new address or even communicate with my by email or phone calls since we already discussed the over payment through those means. The hospital solely relied on sending letters to my old address without making any effort to check if I got any of the letters before going to court.
All doctors in UK are registered with the general medical council and will have their registered address with the council. 
I was also on the hospital bank staff till September 2023 and they made no contact with me for the problem.
I have already filled the N244 form but not sure if I should send that off.

Thank you in advance

The way I would approach this is to tell the hospital that they have damaged your reputation due their negligence and you expect them to put you in the same position you would have been if they had not been negligent.

I have know people in similar situation even being given two years to repay the over payment.  

I would tell the Trust that you expect them to cover your costs to set aside the judgement, to write a letter for the attention of the Court saying they accept that they had failed to follow Practice Direction For Pre-Action Conduct and have no objection to the CCJ being set aside.

You then need them to write to the Registry Trust confirming the CCJ has been set aside and you do the same.

Same goes for each of the Credit Reference Agencies.

It would be absurd for the NHS Trust to assert that they could not contact you before taking this action, they can look you up on NHS systems, they have your phone number 

Objectives of pre-action conduct and protocols

3. Before commencing proceedings, the court will expect the parties to have exchanged sufficient information to—

(a) understand each other’s position;

(b) make decisions about how to proceed;

(c) try to settle the issues without proceedings;

(d) consider a form of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) to assist with settlement;

(e) support the efficient management of those proceedings; and

(f) reduce the costs of resolving the dispute.

https://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/rules/pd_pre-action_conduct#3.1

They seem to have failed on a number of these.

Also ask them to pay you back their costs which might have been included in what you paid.

Countessunfair

I thank everyone who has made comment here. I really, really appreciate.  If I had been here for the past 3 months I feel I wouldn't have suffered psychological as I have.
I will write to the hospital immediately as the last comment suggested. 

Being here is soothing.