Debtor landed with £7,000 costs order after taking legal action to avoid paying £75 fee
It all started with a debt under £200, the debtor in this case had a couple of PCNs totaling £172, which he failed to pay in time. The council sent this debt to Newlyn for enforcement, which resulted in the addition of a £75 compliance fee to the debt. We all know this fee is added as soon as a debt is passed on to an enforcement company for recovery, and once a debt reaches the enforcement stage, the fee becomes part of the debt regardless of whatever the debtor does. In other words, if a debtor pays the original amount minus the compliance fee, £75 would still be outstanding, so the debt hasn’t been paid and can still be enforced.
This is no different from when councils add an amount for issuing summons when council tax is not paid, or when a claim is issued in the county court and the court fee paid by the claimant becomes part of the outstanding amount. If a debtor does not make arrangements to repay a debt and the creditor has to take further steps to recover it by whatever means, it is only fair that the debtor should be responsible for the costs incurred by the creditor.
As the debtor failed to pay the outstanding amount, the debt was enforced and the debtor’s cars were clamped. The clamps were then removed and the cars moved to a church car park, thinking that would make them immune to removal, the car park being private land not belonging to the debtor. However, in this case, the cars had already been taken into control when they were clamped, so it didn’t matter that they were moved. One of the cars was removed. What started out as a small debt had now become much larger, as both the enforcement and sale stage fees were now added to the £75 outstanding, and there was also the prospect of storage costs to be paid.
Rather than making payment, the debtor issued proceedings for an injunction and also a claim for damages arising from the enforcement action, including some rather extravagant sums for car hire. The result was that the court found the debtor’s conduct to have been unreasonable on numerous counts. Despite being an action in the small claims track where costs are not usually awarded, the court ordered the claimant to pay the defendant’s costs. There is a provision to make a costs order against a party who has behaved unreasonably in the course of proceedings in the small claims track. In this case, costs of £7,000 were ordered against a claimant who had already spent hundreds issuing proceedings and, allegedly, thousands hiring a vehicle, despite having another vehicle of his own. ALL THIS TO AVOID PAYING £75!!!
WHO advised the claimant to pay the council directly to avoid the fee? WHO advised him to apply for an injunction instead of paying the enforcement company to recover his car, and despite the fact that the injunction fee wasn’t much lower than the amount he had to pay to get the car back? And WHO would have advised him to issue an extravagant claim for damages which the claimant was then unable to prove? All this is consistent with the advice that Jason Bennison routinely dishes out on his own websites Dealing with Bailiffs, Beat the Bailiff and Bailiff Help Forum.
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UPDATE:
The claimant (Mr Bola) has not paid the cost order (of approx £7,000). Instead, Mr Bola sought permission to appeal both the claim itself and the subsequent cost order. His application to appeal has been dismissed by His Honour John Hand QC. A copy of the N24 Order to follow……..
Pote is living up to his ‘mushroom’ nickname alright, he seems not to know that a judgment is a public document. His ignorance of the subject would no doubt be because of the rarity of him seeing judgments from his pal, “Schedule 12”. HA..HA..HA
Pote is shooting himself in the foot on CAG, he is just showing everyone what a knowledgeless spiteful little prick he is.
It does make me wonder that all this talk of an appeal, who is paying for it & if it all goes pear shaped?
Didn’t the Potey lad say that there is a little matter of Bola’s failure to pay his solicitors bills? He needs to overcome this little hurdle first.
Can anyone else believe just how many hours Pote has spent on CAG now defending Jason and his incorrect opinion that paying direct means that the fees are not enforceable. I think Pote has himself very confused, as Jason would not advise to pay direct unless he thought this would mean escaping the fees
I hope Jason’s partner doesn’t get jealous of the attention given to Jason by Pote and his devotion to him.
Must be true love
While I am on abut memory failures, how about this from Mark.
“The day you remember something correctly lad is the day man lands on Mars. Looking at the threads, I see nobody been advised to pay the creditor directly but attempts to help those who seek advice AFTER paying directly”
What!! Jason issue templates which advise debtors to pay creditors directly.
Wasn’t that the key argument in the Bola case? That he paid the council directly? I wonder who told him to do so, when people get a communication from a bailiff, they would also provide you with payment instructions. It wouldn’t occur to everyone to go back to the creditor to make a payment. One thing Jason always advises is to pay the courts directly to ditch the fines, then the bailiffs have returned with a locksmith.
TBH I would have sued him myself years ago, only as my friend on Quatloos says, he hasn’t a pot to piss in so what is the point.