Asking for a friend on this one. He moved abroad and recently asked me to help him trace someone who had a court judgement against him awarding my friend £3000. It reaches 6 years in november that the debt has been outstanding and my friend is worried that statute of limitations applies at that point and he won't see his money. He isn't wealthy himself and £3000 would be very handy right now. Apart from there's principles at stake!
The award was in respect of a property rental and the chap in question was running an unregistered HMO which was unfit for habitation and the judge ordered repayment of the rent to my friend. He is a known 'rogue landlord', reported as such in the press, and incidentally has a bigger CCJ outstanding for around £70k which i think was awarded in favour of Barnet council.
I've never got involved in anything like this but a passing interest in the law and the social justice element got my interest. I know nothing about debt enforcement. My friend asked me to trace where he is so he could instruct bailiffs so that's what I've tried to do.
However, the guy is proving impossible to track down. He has many companies in his name using many addresses. Some of those are HMOs but Companies House still accepted that as a legitimate company address. I'm aware Companies House now have powers to enforce a real address with consent of owner is used for company addresses but that is new and doesn't help my friend.
He has no social media presence, did marry (according to ancestry.co.uk records) and had kids (the eldest in her 20s and now becoming famous as a singer in West end theatre), and may not even be in the country now as he is originally from Africa.
I have told my friend I don't think I can help him. I'm not willing to befriend his kids or stake out one of his Hertfordshire addresses just to get more clues.
But what really gets me about this is how easy it seems to be to avoid paying a court awarded debt. The court case was in 2018 and despite an official court ordered chase up in 2021 when he missed a payment deadline, which he didn't attend, nothing has happened. Does this not become a police matter if he fails to pay?
Just interested if anyone else has similar experience or knows if there's a way to enforce this that wouldn't involve more expense for the injured party.
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This seems to provide a fairly good summary.
One thing's for sure, it will all cost more money. So the big question is has the individual the wherewithal for an order to be enforced. It seemed to me that a check of the Land Registry for any obvious assets would be a good place to start.
But as always is your friend likely to be throwing good money after bad? (My old job often involved dealing with people who had lost money. Hardly anybody got what was owed to them. The only real successful exception involved the persuasion provided by a heavily tattooed member of a Triad and a very large machete.)
I did a check of land registry for 2 properties where he has companies registered. He owns neither as of now. But given his 'occupation' is in property lettings and development he will always have addresses he can use without actually inhabiting.
He has other active companies (that seem to be filing accounts) so maybe that is an avenue to go down. Again though, very likely to be good money after bad and on that basis no justice.