Enforcing a Judgment You Have Won

Choosing an enforcement method without knowing anything about the debtor is how claimants throw good money after bad. Each application costs a fee that is added to the judgment debt in principle but comes out of your pocket in practice, and a failed enforcement attempt recovers nothing.

Work through what you already know. Do they have a job, and do you know the employer? Do they own or rent their home? Do you have bank details from a previous payment? Is there a trading business with visible assets? Are there other judgments against them on the Register of Judgments, Orders and Fines, which you can search through Registry Trust?

If you know very little, you can apply for an order to obtain information. The court orders the debtor to attend court and answer questions about their income, assets and outgoings, producing bills, payslips and statements. The fee is lower than the enforcement fees themselves and is listed in the EX50 schedule. The order has teeth: a debtor who fails to attend, or attends and refuses to answer, is in contempt of court, although a suspended committal order is the usual sanction.

A warrant of control authorises county court enforcement agents (bailiffs) to take control of the debtor's goods and sell them to pay the judgment. You apply on form N323 and the fee is £96.

How it works in practice: the enforcement agent first writes to the debtor asking for payment within 7 days. If nothing is paid, they visit the debtor's home or business, look for goods that can be sold, and either take them or list them under a controlled goods agreement that lets the debtor keep using them while paying. The costs of taking, storing and selling goods come out of the sale proceeds before you see anything.

The limits matter:

• A county court warrant cannot be issued for more than £5,000. You cannot ask the county court to issue a warrant above that figure.
• You cannot apply where the amount owed is £10 or less.
• The warrant lasts for one year. If the debt is not paid in that time it lapses, though it can be extended for a further fee.
• Enforcement agents cannot take everything — tools of the trade up to a value limit, basic household items, and goods belonging to someone else are out of reach.

Transferring to the High Court. Where the judgment is for £5,000 or more, you can transfer it to the High Court and issue a writ of control on form N293A, enforced by High Court Enforcement Officers, who are generally more persistent than county court bailiffs. Between £600 and £5,000 you may choose either court. There is one crucial exception: if the judgment arose from an agreement regulated by the Consumer Credit Act 1974, enforcement can only be in the county court, with no upper limit.

An attachment of earnings order directs the debtor's employer to deduct a fixed sum from their pay each pay day and send it to the court, which passes it to you. You apply on form N337 and the fee is £139.

The court sends the debtor form N56 asking for details of income, outgoings and dependants. From that information the court sets two figures: a normal deduction rate, the amount taken each pay day, and a protected earnings rate, a floor below which the debtor's take-home pay must not fall. If earnings in a given period are too low to allow the full deduction while staying above the protected rate, less is deducted.

When it suits:

• The debtor is in stable employment and you know who the employer is.
• The debt is moderate and you are content to be paid over time rather than in a lump.
• The debtor has no realisable assets, so a warrant would come back empty.

When it does not:

• The debtor is self-employed. There is no employer to serve, so no attachment of earnings order can be made.
• The debtor is unemployed or on benefits. Most benefits cannot be attached by this route.
• The debtor changes jobs frequently — the order has to be re-served on each new employer, and although the debtor must notify the court, enforcement of that duty is another step.

A charging order under the Charging Orders Act 1979 turns an unsecured judgment debt into a debt secured against the debtor's land or property, registered at HM Land Registry. You apply on form N379 and the fee is £139.

The process runs in two stages. The court first makes an interim charging order without notice to the debtor, which is registered against the property and served on the debtor and any other interested parties. A hearing is then listed at which the court decides whether to make the order final. At that hearing the debtor can argue against it — most commonly that a court order or written agreement for instalments is already in place and being kept to, in which case courts frequently decline to make the order final.

What a charging order does not do is force a sale. It secures the debt so that it must be paid out of the proceeds when the property is sold, in priority order behind any existing mortgage. To force a sale the creditor must make a separate application for an order for sale, and courts are reluctant to grant one for a modest debt, particularly where children or vulnerable people live in the property.

It suits a creditor who is patient: the debt sits on the property, accruing interest where interest is payable, until the debtor sells or remortgages. It is close to useless where the property is in negative equity or where the debtor does not own property at all. Where the property is jointly owned and only one owner is the debtor, the charge can attach only to that person's beneficial share.

A third party debt order requires someone who owes money to the debtor — usually a bank or building society, but it can be a customer of a trading debtor — to pay it to you instead. You apply on form N349 and the fee is £139.

As with charging orders it runs in two stages. The court makes an interim third party debt order without notice, which is served on the bank and freezes the account up to the judgment sum. A hearing follows at which the court decides whether to make the order final and direct payment out.

This is the fastest route to actual cash — but it is also the most all-or-nothing:

• It captures only what is in the account on the day the interim order is served. Money paid in the following day is not caught. An account that happens to be empty that morning yields nothing and you have spent the fee.
• You need to identify the bank and, ideally, the account. Guessing is expensive.
• A joint account is generally beyond reach where only one holder is the judgment debtor.
• The debtor can apply for a hardship payment order releasing funds for essential living expenses, and the court will grant one where the freeze would cause real hardship to the debtor or their family.

It suits cases where you have good reason to believe there is money sitting in an identified account — for example, a trading business with a known bank, or a debtor who has recently received a payment.

Match the method to what the debtor has:

• Employed, no assets — attachment of earnings.
• Owns property, no spare income — charging order, accepting that payment may be years away.
• Trading business or identified account with money in it — third party debt order.
• Goods worth selling, debt of £5,000 or less — warrant of control; above £5,000, consider transferring to the High Court unless the debt arose under a Consumer Credit Act regulated agreement.
• You know nothing — order to obtain information first.

You are not limited to one method, and you can use more than one at the same time or in sequence — but each carries its own fee, payable by you up front and recoverable only if the enforcement succeeds.

Interest. Under the County Courts (Interest on Judgment Debts) Order 1991, a county court judgment for a sum of not less than £5,000 carries interest at the rate specified in section 17 of the Judgments Act 1838, currently 8% a year, from the date of judgment until it is satisfied. Judgments in respect of a sum recoverable under a Consumer Credit Act 1974 regulated agreement, and suspended possession orders for a dwelling house, are excluded.

Time limits. A judgment can normally be enforced without permission for six years from the date it was given. After that the court's permission is required and is not automatic. Do not sit on a judgment for years and expect enforcement to remain straightforward.