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CCJ Removal.

A County Court Judgment sits on your file for six years. It blocks mortgages, rentals and credit. If the claim was sent to the wrong address (a common scenario) or the debt was disputed, the judgment can be set aside.

4 to 12 weeks
Typical timeline
Court route
N244 set aside
Fixed fee
Quoted before we start

When a CCJ can be set aside

A judgment in default (the standard CCJ where you did not file a defence) can be set aside under Civil Procedure Rule 13. The court will normally agree to set it aside if you have a "real prospect of successfully defending" or there is "some other good reason". In practice the most common winning grounds are:

  • You never received the claim form. The claim was sent to an old address. You only found out when the judgment showed up on your credit file.
  • The debt is not yours, or has already been settled. A purchased debt that was paid years ago. An identity error.
  • The amount is wrong. Charges added that were never agreed. Interest applied incorrectly.
  • The claimant has no right to sue. Often a debt buyer that cannot evidence the assignment.

A CCJ paid in full inside one calendar month of judgment is removed from your credit file. After that, paying it satisfies it but does not remove it. Set aside is the route to actual removal.

How we run the case

  1. 1

    Find the judgment

    A Trust Online search confirms the case number, court, claimant, amount and date. We need the case number to do anything else.

  2. 2

    Pull the file

    Where possible we obtain the original claim form from the court. We need to see what was actually filed.

  3. 3

    Draft the application

    A formal N244 application with a witness statement setting out the grounds for set aside. The N244 itself costs £303 to file at present (court fee, payable to the court).

  4. 4

    Hearing or paper decision

    Some applications are decided on paper. Some need a short remote hearing. We prepare you for either.

  5. 5

    Removal from credit file

    Once the order is granted, the judgment is removed from the public register and the credit bureaus update their records, usually within four to six weeks.

A word on timing

The court expects a set aside application to be filed promptly once you become aware of the judgment. Delays can be argued around but they get harder the longer the gap. If you have just found out about a CCJ that should not be there, the right time to deal with it is now, not next year.

Common questions

Questions, answered straight.

I paid the CCJ. Can it still be removed?
Paying a CCJ marks it as Satisfied on the credit file but does not remove it. To remove it after the one month grace period, the underlying judgment needs to be set aside. We can still bring a set aside application even after payment if the original grounds are sound.
What if I owed the money but the claim never reached me?
Service issues are commonly accepted as a basis for set aside under CPR 13.3. The court will then normally direct that you pay the underlying debt or agree a settlement, but the CCJ itself comes off your credit file.
Do I have to attend court?
Most set aside applications are decided on paper or by a short remote hearing of around 15 minutes. We attend with you. Many of our clients never enter a courtroom.
How much does the whole thing cost?
The court fee for the N244 application is £303. Our fee is quoted in writing once we have seen the file. We do not take cases where set aside is unlikely, so the fees you pay are on cases we expect to win.

A CCJ that should not be there?

Send us the case number or the credit file entry. We will pull the file, look at the grounds, and tell you whether set aside is realistic.

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