Here we have a poster who, of their own admission, is not well acquainted with fora. They say they received one letter, presumably the notice of enforcement. The also say the have already paid the debt to the creditor, who is a firm of solicitors. Bennison tells them that solicitors don’t pass money to bailiffs!

Although the posts were all made last year, the thread seemed to have developed in one of the dark recesses of the BHF underground that only the Privileged Few can see, as it remained out of public view and only seems to have resurfaced after the latest BHF vanishing act. Maybe it was never meant to resurface at all, just like the one Bennison thought he had made disappear, but was still visible. Maybe this one will also vanish in the haze, but that would be futile, as it has already been captured for posterity.

It turns out the debt is not the OP’s but her husband’s, who is abroad and won’t be back for months. Bennison confidently tells her that the bailiffs can’t do anything because he isn’t around.

So far, so good, but the good news don’t last long; a few days later, the OP has received a visit. She is under the impression that there was no fee added for this visit and she had a week to pay.

Amy is under the mistaken belief that you have one month to pay a judgment before it can be transferred up for enforcement. This idea comes from the principle that, if you pay a CCJ within one month, it does not get recorded on the Registry Trust. But that’s not the same as not being able to enforce it earlier, if it’s a forthwith order, it is payable immediately, unless there is an agreement put in place through the court to vary the order.

It’s not clear what sum the Sheriffs were after, but it’s very likely to have been just the compliance fee, because the OP had previously said they’d only received the notice of enforcement and no visits, until this one.

At this point, if the original debt had been paid, the only amount due would be the compliance fee. The OP reiterates that the money was passed on to the Sheriffs and Bennison makes it look like the matter is firmly closed and the bailiff can’t do anything when he says:

It doesn’t matter where the money went. If they really gave away the money then more fool them because the debtor is overseas and has no realistic prospect of recovering anything while he is out of jurisdiction. The amount outstanding has been paid and that is the end of the matter.

No realistic prospect? Really? Keep reading and we shall soon find out whether they recovered something or not.

Bennison’s love of injunctions knows no bounds

Well, Bennison never disappoints! He didn’t hesitate to state that “the victim can obtain an injunction”. We all know what happens when injunctions are applied for willy-nilly, don’t we? This is a very good example: Bennison v Nominet.

The OP is blissfully unaware of what were, at the time, recent developments involving Bennison’s love of injunctions and how much money he was now in debt as a result of his application (£27,100 in costs ordered by the court against him to be precise). By now, she has fallen for his advice hook, line and sinker, and instructs him to apply for an injunction! It’s not clear against who, presumably the Sheriffs… or what the nature of the application would be, presumably stopping them from going near the OP’s house… which is just like an injunction against the police arresting you for a crime, or to stop the taxman from looking at your books… you can’t apply for an injunction to stop people from doing their job!

It is obvious from the above posts that this has gone off the forum and a client relationship has been born, we can only assume that a £35 consultation fee would have been involved, unless he was feeling generous and decided to do it “pro-bono”.

Super Pote comes to the rescue!

Here we see Mushroom Pote at his best, having a true flash of brilliance, which doesn’t happen very often, so this is for printing out and framing! Pote corrects the previous advice regarding forthwith judgments, no doubt with a little help from his best mate Google, and states, quite correctly, that a forthwith judgment is due immediately. He also asks about the cost of the injunction, dashing Jason’s hopes of being hired for his low cost drafting services.

Being used to sticky situations like this one, Jason quickly shifts gears and says that there is no need to actually apply for an injunction, just “give notice”. Presumably this means just THREATENING an injunction, something that may well work with some individuals, but the chances of such an empty threat working with the Sheriffs are less than nil!

Problem solved – for now…

He’s done a “P59 notice”, whatever that means, so maybe he did get hired to draft something after all!

Amy is very happy to see that the problem appears to be solved, this is all done and dusted, right? Jason stated very confidently that the judgment dies and, should the bailiff return, all they need to do is fill in an N16a and do a witness statement, text it all to the bailiff, and that will be the end of the matter. WOW! That should get the bailiff scared to death! Yeah right, like bailiffs have never been used to receiving threats of anything. An N16a is available online and anyone can download and fill one in. As for the witness statement, here is where one would need help, as most wouldn’t know where to start. Enter Bennison’s low cost drafting services.

The tide turns

All that joy and jubilation were short lived. Three weeks after the above was posted, the OP comes back to the forum, to announce that the Sheriffs had returned and clamped the car. The OP admits this was the first night they hadn’t hidden the car, obviously getting complacent after believing Bennison’s Words of Wisdom regarding the alleged death of the debt and the enforcement power.

13 Nov 2017 10:47

Morning all.
Firstly thank you so much Schedule 12 for your help this am. Despite what you told us this am, they took not one scrap of notice!

That suggests the OP got in touch with Bennison that morning, and his advice was no help at all!

At 6.30am this morning the bullies arrived back! Clamped our car (luckily the second car was in the garage!) and said to pay by 8am otherwise car will be towed away! We had no option but to pay £1,600 by debit card! They kept saying that it wasn’t all fees! Yeh right! Last night was the first night I hadn’t hidden the car!

Whatever happened to the N16a and witness statement sent by text to the bailiff? Obviously that wouldn’t be much use once the card had been clamped!

Let’s not forget the OP had already paid the debt directly to the original creditor -these must have been the fees-including the compliance fee, which was the one that started the whole ball rolling, the two enforcement stage fees and, as the car got clamped, also the sale stage fee.

Setting  aside a judgment

The OP then says:

What’s my next stage please? My husband is home now for a week. Still need to get judgement set aside, (another thing, they kept saying we couldn’t!) Do they all talk utter BS!

No, they don’t talk utter BS, Bennison does! Getting a judgment set aside is not something you can easily do. The provision to set aside judgments is there for those cases where the debtor did not receive the claim form and has a viable defence to the claim. As we have seen, anyone can issue a claim by merely filling in a form or logging in to MCOL and paying a fee (or filling in an EX160a if applicable, Bennison’s likely alternative that would allow him to go round issuing spurious claims without forking out a penny for them). As we have seen elsewhere on this site, Bennison is no stranger to issuing totally spurious claims.

If a defendant fails to respond to a claim within 14 days, the claimant can apply for a default judgment. This is done without looking at the merits of the case, and means you can end up with a judgment for money you don’t owe, or maybe the amount claimed is incorrect, or the debt is statute barred, the goods were returned or the work was not done, etc. In those cases, it is possible to apply to have the judgment set aside. That doesn’t seem to be the case here, the OP stated the debt was for solicitors’ fees and never said a word about the money not being owed, nor disputed the amount owed to the firm, only the need to pay bailiff fees after the judgment amount was paid.

A set aside application costs £255 to submit; the debt was for around £900 and the creditor is a firm of solicitors. Chances of success would be virtually nil, and we don’t even know whether the OP received the claim form or what happened that led to the CCJ being issued.

An attempt to avoid paying the £75 compliance fee led to this debt sky rocketing to £1,600!!!

Non-stop bullshit

One thing Bennison never does is give up and stop the bullshit from flowing freely, no matter what.

Why would the debtor apply for a stay of execution, when both the debt AND the fees have been paid in full? The bailiffs are not going to return, there is nothing to execute and nothing to stay! As stated above, a set aside application is unlikely to succeed. In any case, it would be a totally separate application from a stay of execution -you can apply to set aside a judgment that’s not been enforced with a writ.

Recover all loses from the creditor? You don’t say! First of all, the creditor is a firm of solicitors, so they will be not one, but 10 steps ahead of an obviously clueless debtor, acting on the advice of an even more clueless wannabe armchair paralegal! Furthermore, the creditor acted within their rights to enforce a judgment in their favour, without breaking any laws. If anyone would know the law, it would be a law firm!

It would be interesting to find out what a reverse writ is, but, having seen Bennison’s command of the English language, it’s probably something he’s just made up like the “bodywork videos” he refers to above. Google isn’t much help, the only mentions of such wording appear to be on Bennison’s own Bailiff Help Forum, so he must have made that one up.

Unless he was feeling particularly generous at the time, it looks like these people would, at the very least, have paid Bennison a telephone consultation fee, possibly two, and maybe also paid for other “services” as well. On top of that, and the original judgment amount, they were forced to pay the Sheriffs £1,700! All because they were told that the debt had “died” and they didn’t have to pay the compliance fee. You do the math!

That’s right, in the following post it is stated that the actual payment made to the bailiffs was for £1,700.