HMCTS releases regular statistics on the handling of claims. The releases cover all types of claims, both criminal and civil. They give a good indication of the liklihood and time frame to get a CCJ.
The stats give a useful indication of how quickly you are likely to be able to get a CCJ entered after a claim has been issued.
It shows that on average, in the past 12 months, around 129,000 civil claims are started at court each month. Of those, around 20,500 are responded to with a defence. Therefore, only around 16% of claims are defended and the remaining 84% enable the claimant to enter judgment and get a CCJ.
The expectation is, that if you start a claim yourself, that it will not be responded to, either because the debtor pays, you reach terms or you get a CCJ that you can then enforce.
If you issue a claim online, it is issued immediately and posted out to the defendant in a number of days. If not responded to, you could realistically get a CCJ within a month, as the Defendant has 14 days from service of the claim to respond to it. If there is no response, you can apply to enter judgment and get a CCJ.
If you seek to start a claim by posting a physical claim form with documents to the CCMCC, then it will take a few days more for it to arrive in the post, for the court staff to issue the claim and then post the papers to the Defendant.
If a claim is defended, and its value does not exceed £10,000, it is likely to be allocated to the small claims track, which is the expedited system for civil claims.
The statistics show that on average it is taking around 50 weeks to get a small claim to trial, from the claim being issued. Much depends upon the volume of work the County Court Hearing Centre has to get through. Some will be better than others.
The stats show that 84% of claims are not defended. Why pay lawyers to pursue straight forward unpaid invoices, when they are unlikely to be defended? Our training enables you to bring a claim in house. It isn’t difficult once you have been shown how.
You can access the stats on the HMCTS site here.
