Civil Court Users Association (CCUA) broadly welcomes the final report on Enforcement published by the Civil Justice Council (CJC) on 9 April 2025.
CCUA Chair Rob Thompson comments:
“For far too long, whilst enforcement has widely been identified and accepted as the area which would most benefit from court reform, it has remained largely neglected.
“CCUA is particularly pleased with the CJC’s “strong support” for the implementation of Part 4 of the Tribunals, Courts and Tribunal Act 2007. The Association has been campaigning for this ever since it first hit the statute book. The provision of better data to Judgment Creditors would be of huge benefit to all parties, allowing necessary enforcement to be far better focussed.
“The CJC’s proposal for a Unified Digital Court for Enforcement is intriguing. Depending on the detail, it is again highly likely that this would be supported by court users.
“The proposed reduction in the fee for applications to set aside Judgment is hugely welcome. The relatively recent creation of this fee, set at such a high amount, could never be objectively justified. It appeared to be nothing more than a cynical measure to create revenue from court users who often have little or no choice but to make the application, which is also often fairly straightforward and easy to deal with.
“Many of the other proposals are sensible, overdue and well thought out. There are also a few areas of concern though:
“Yet again, it is proposed that the answer to non-engagement by Defendants is to suggest imposing yet more bureaucracy upon Claimants. This idea is misguided and has failed time and time again. Despite the report admitting that there is little or no data on the extent to which Pre-Action Protocols are not followed, it is proposed that Claimants will now have to confirm that they have complied, as well as confirming that proceedings have been served, and that the Claim is not statute barred. This is completely disproportionate. We would suggest that rather than targeting the compliant majority, it would be far better focused to instead limit any changes to increased sanctions on those who are non-compliant (which is also proposed, and seems proportionate).
“The proposed changes to the rules on serving at the “last known address” under CPR 6.9 are naïve and fail to recognise the real difficulties created by evasive Defendants. Requiring service at an address where the individual is ‘registered for council tax’ is wholly impracticable. There should be a responsibility upon any individual to honour their responsibilities, which includes ensuring that they remain contactable. However, in the real world that cannot be relied upon. A change of this rule would deny access to justice to numerous potential claimants and effectively be a written invitation to people to evade their responsibilities and put themselves out of reach of the courts.
“There is particular mention of Judgments in respect of parking charges, following Claim Forms served at out-of-date addresses held by DVLA. Frankly, this is not evidence of any problem with the service rules. It should be possible to rely on those addresses. Updating address details on the vehicle logbook (V5C) is a legal requirement. Failure to do so can attract a fine of up to £1000. Whilst it is of course possible to sympathise with people who may have simply forgotten to update those details, this is a requirement which may become extremely important in the event of the vehicle being involved in an accident or criminal activity, for example. Changing the rules to undermine that obligation, and to make that situation more socially acceptable, is perverse and is likely to actually increase the amount of vehicles which are not correctly registered. This could have serious implications including effectively encouraging people choosing to have out of date or incorrect addresses, so as to deliberately avoid penalty charges. In turn, safety in numbers will protect others who might be choosing to follow the same path to avoid detection whilst engaging in criminal activity. We would suggest that it would be far better to instead conduct a publicity campaign to remind the public of the need to update the record at DVLA so that they remain able to receive all forms of official notice, not just claim forms. The focus should be on curing the issue itself, not just one of the symptoms.
“Aside from these few but important concerns, the majority of the proposals in the final report are supported by the CCUA and likely to be of benefit to court users.”
Rob is also quoted in an article in the Financial Times entitled ‘Creditors struggle to recover unpaid debts in England and Wales, report warns’. Read more here.
