CCJ Delivered to Old Address - Spring Parking/DCBL

PUSB17

Firstly, thanks to everyone on the forum for their advice, it has been really useful to date.

I’ll try to keep this brief as it relates to a parking charge in May 2018. Spring Parking operated in the private car park where I lived and I ‘failed to display a valid permit’ (in the car parking space I owned). I actually spoke to the attendant, showed him my permit, and he said it was fine - nothing to worry about. They failed to issue a PCN, instead what came was a barrage of unpaid debt letters. I replied to Spring Parking (I know now this was the wrong thing to do and should have challenged this appropriately but I was young and foolish then).

Fast forward and after ignoring threatening letters for years, I received a claim in December 2023, wrote a compelling defence (thanks to the help on this forum) but having moved house in November 2024, I did not receive a DQ or notice of a judgement from the court. My first communication regarding this was from DCBL last week informing me of unpaid CCJ and a demand for £380.78 in 14 days. Chronology is as follows: 

Claim Status

A claim was issued against you on 07/12/2023

Your acknowledgment of service was submitted on 20/12/2023 at 11:34:47

Your acknowledgment of service was received on 20/12/2023 at 14:05:09

Your defence was received on 11/01/2024

DQ filed by claimant on 06/02/2024

DQ sent to you on 01/08/2025

General sanctions order was made on 27/09/2025

Defence was struck out on 27/11/2025

A judgment was issued against you on 27/11/2025

I don’t want to go over old ground here as I appreciate there are lots of similar cases and I have read the Newbies Thread multiple times but I can’t find one exactly like my own - they seem to relate to failure to receive POC which I did receive. I have studied the cases and am well aware of the situation regarding N244 but my main question is, should I write to Spring Parking and DBCL as a matter of urgency along the lines of the recommendation of @troublemaker22 ? I have edited the below with the relevant dates but I appreciate the situation is different. Apologies for posting the whole thing but I don't want to exclude anything of value.

URGENT

Dear Sirs,

SPRING PARKING LTD (THE ‘CLAIMANT’) V XXXX (THE ‘DEFENDANT’) CLAIM REFERENCE XXX

On 26 March 2026, I received the attached letter dated 19 March 2026 from Direct Collections Bailiffs Limited (‘DCBL’). This came as a tremendous shock as it is the first and only communication I have received from the Claimant or any organisation representing the Claimant in relation to this claim.   

I made immediate enquiries of the CNBC from which I was able to establish that: 

1.       the claim relates to an alleged parking event in May 2018;

2.       the claim form was sent to an old address at which I no longer reside; and 

3.       if I had been given the opportunity to do so, I would have successfully defended the claim.

I did not receive any pre-claim correspondence, not even a letter of claim as required by the PAP. Nor did I receive the claim form or any particulars of claim and was thus deprived of the ability to defend the claim. The Claimant is well aware that people move home from time to time. They also know that I did not respond to any communications sent to me at my old address.

This situation is explicitly dealt with in the Civil Procedure Rules which provide at CPR 6.9(3):

 (3) Where a claimant has reason to believe that the address of the defendant … is an address at which the defendant no longer resides or carries on business, the claimant must take reasonable steps to ascertain the address of the defendant’s current residence or place of business (‘current address’). 

The Claimant is a member of the British Parking Association (the ‘BPA’) and is bound by the BPA’s Code of Practice which gives voice to CPR 6.9(3) in the following terms:

 24.1c Before serving a Letter Before Claim and prior to the issue of proceedings, Operators must, if no responses have been received to the NTD/NTK/reminder letters, take reasonable endeavours to ensure that the contact details for the person you are writing to are correct.

If the Claimant had taken the actions required by the Civil Procedure Rules and the Code of Practice, my current address would have been found easily, which is obviously what DCBL did before sending their letter dated 19 March 2026.  If those actions had been performed at the correct time rather than after judgment, I would not have been deprived of the ability to defend the claim. 

By reason of the Claimant’s breach of the Civil Procedure Rules, which amounts to an abuse of the process of the Court, the claim form was never properly served and the judgment must be set aside at the Claimant’s expense and the claim dismissed because it is now too late for the particulars of claim to be re-served.

In view of the foregoing, I invite the Claimant to join with me in an application to set aside the judgment and dismiss the claim, with the Claimant paying the court fee and no order as to costs.

Please respond to the above offer as soon as possible so that, if the offer is acceptable to the Claimant, we can work together to right the wrong that the Claimant has done to me. 

To give you a reasonable time to take instructions and for us to agree a suite of documents for the Court, I am willing to defer making a unilateral application to set aside the judgment until 4pm on 16 April 2026. If a joint application has not been made by that time, I intend to instruct a solicitor to apply to the Court unilaterally for an order setting the judgment aside, striking out the particulars of claim, dismissing the claim and awarding costs against the Claimant on a full indemnity basis.

Please respond by immediate return.

Yours faithfully,

XXX

Any advice would be most appreciated, I was ready to accept defeat after nearly 8 years until I checked the forum earlier this week especially after misinterpreting what ‘satisfied’ meant on a CCJ - it seems somewhat unjust that it would stay with me for 6 years when I haven't had the chance to properly defend this!

Gr1pr

You definitely defended the claim

The problem was that you didn't update your address for the service of papers and didn't keep checking your MCOL claim history, so when they posted the N180 DQ document to you last summer it went to the old, unmonitored address

The lack of a submitted N180 DQ document led to the default Judgment being issued against you

You were successfully defending the claim until you failed to complete the paperwork process

You also failed to update your address on MCOL

PUSB17

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81947188#Comment_81947188

Yes, fair point. Do I have grounds to set aside the CCJ?

Coupon-mad

Yes you do, under CPR 13.3. It should be set aside for 'some good reason' which includes you having 'good prospects of defence' and acting promptly as soon as you learned about the CCJ.

It will cost you a £313 fee to the court, which may or may not be awarded to you (unlikely in your circumstances, unless you make a compelling case for them having acted wholly unreasonably such as issuing a PCN to you in a bay that you own and not cancelling it when you appealed).

I would not email first.

I'd crack on with the N244 asap in the coming days (not weeks as you must act promptly). You will need a WS as well as evidence of moving, and state that you believed the Case had been discontinued because over a year had passed. Also DCB group easily traced the new address so it will be common ground that clearly the DQ was not properly served, thus it will be unreasonable for them / their client to oppose the application.

PUSB17

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81947437#Comment_81947437

Thank you for this @Coupon-mad. I've started drafting a WS - is there a good template to go off? Are the ones on the Newbies thread the best examples?

Coupon-mad

Your WS is going to have to be mostly bespoke (the story & evidence that you moved, thinking the old claim from a year before had been discontinued) because your case isn't like most of our CCJ set asides.

Coupon-mad

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81948559#Comment_81948559

Just to add that you could email DCB Legal first, proving when you moved and suggesting consent to a set aside application, which reduces the N244 fee cost to £129.

However, I didn't suggest that only because I think DCB Legal will delay replying to you for a fortnight and then will likely suggest they will consent … if you pay the claim.

I suspect all it will do is delay your application but it's up to you. There is this reason to try (we have seen this achieved before):

If DCB Legal unreasonably fails to accept an invitation to participate in an application for a consent order, the court is likely to award costs against the claimant - at least to the extent of the difference between £313 and £123 plus LIP time or lost earnings.

So it does bring costs into play if they refuse.

Oh dear. What a headache; we wish you'd just emailed the CNBC when you moved. Massive danger and an expensive lesson. This was bound to happen. You don't leave a live (unresolved, if silent) court claim with an old address.

Coupon-mad

I will send you a pm.