County Court Or HCEO, Anyone Had Any Experience?
 

Just need a bit of advice folks. A former employer, refused to pay me my last months pay earlier in the year and I ended up going to an Industrial Tribunal and winning against him.

Now this was back in May, he then appealed and after 4 months, I finally got a ruling that threw out the appeal. He then had a further 28 days to appeal the appeal, which has now passed and I spoke to appeals Court yesterday and he confirmed that no appeal had been lodged, so I have now effectively won my case.

Now it's not a huge amount of money (just over £2,200) but it would be nice to have it before Christmas. I find it strange that the Employment Tribunal don't enforce payment, but apparently it's down to me.

Now I have a choice of issuing either a County Court Judgement, (which I believe he can ignore) or go down the High Court Enforcement Officer route, but they then take a percentage of the award.

I just wondered if anyone had any experience of using either system, as I want to get this rolling tomorrow?

I have not had personal experience. The question is how difficult he will be.
If he pays the monies due at the first stage you will be OK as the fee is only £90 However if he is difficult and you have to go through the next three stages which eventually leads to seizure of goods then that will wipe out the monies due to you.

To the best of my knowledge that's not strictly correct. The creditor has to pay a compliance fee of £75 +VAT (which is the aforementioned £90). All other fees (court, sherrif etc) are added to the amount initially owed and the debtor is responsible for paying those. If he coughs up then he's also liable for the initial £90 fee so you'll get that back as well. If he fails to pay then all you lose is the £90.

That's a very simplistic outline, so have a look at this which explains things in more detail.

http://thesheriffsoffice.com/high-co...ees-and-stages

Small claims court route is cheap and simple to use. I used it to sue Sky TV and won. I had to use the process as part of my job some years ago too.
You already have another judgement to back your case so this route should be a formality. You won't get it by Christmas though.
Remedies you can apply for are:
1. Warrant of execution. No they don't hang him.:}
2. Attachment of earnings
3. Charging order on his house.

If I have missed anything I apologise as it's been a few years. As you go through the process your fees are part of your claim so you get all that back too. Court staff are helpful and will assist you filliing out the forms. Like I said it's not fast but it's a great way for us ordinary folk to get justice and in 30 years I lost only one claim. Good luck.

I took an individual motor trader to Small Claims over a duff gearbox many years ago. After a similar process of him stringing stuff out I won. I used the Local Court Service bailiffs to try and enforce the order, but he claimed to have nothing of value and they left him alone. I never got the money.

I imagine the route to take depends on who is involved. Big companies like SKy etc don't generally like having CCJs hanging around so will settle. Small time crooks and chancers don't care so are harder to pin down.

If this is a one-man band operation and he's already shown he doesn't care about doing the decent thing and paying people what they are due, I (sadly) think you may struggle - however if it's a business that needs to "keep its nose clean", they will want to avoid an outstanding CCJ.

I wish I'd known my chances of success before I started cos I probably wouldn't have bothered.

Thanks for the replies so far, if it helps, it's a Ltd Company, so I don't think they can say that they have no money.

Hi.
Not exactly the same issue but similar. I was sacked at the front of the workshop in July of 2015. No proper procedures had even been done, no written warnings or any note of verbal warnings, one verbal due to a simple oversight but unrecorded.
They then tried to pan me off with £800 redundancy which again broke the rules.
The CAB & ACAS were consulted, the CAB said it was cut and dried ACAS were a bit more hesitant but both said it could be a problem with a small employer trying to get any money from them if I won. Eventually I left it as I had to stump up fees as I wasn't in a union, not sure if this was correct advice though.
Seems it is correct that trying to get a pay out can be a nightmare.
Good Luck and I'd be interested if all goes well for you.

Yes they can!

If the Ltd Business has no/little assets and little/no cash in the bank, they can show they have no money and nothings can be done about it, apart from threatening to wind up the business

This achieves nothing, but can be done!

Personally I'd go down the CCJ route and take it from there

I had to do similar earlier this year with a client that took some work on behind my back and left me out of pocket, even though they'd signed and agreed to my TOBs!

I lodged a county court claim, emailed all the necessary info and they awarded the case to me almost immediately as it was blatantly clear what had been done!

It was around £2k as well! Stand up and fight for it, you've just got to know when you're either flogging a dead donkey, or chasing dust etc!

I have always sent the high court enforcement officers in when a county court judgement hasn't been settled - they've never failed to recover the money for me because they have far greater powers than standard baliffs.

The flat fee of around £70 (varies depending on which hceo you use) has to be paid up front but is then added to the overall debt.

If, as In Joe's experience above, the money can't be recovered then that fee isn't recovered making your total loss the mcol fee & the hceo fee. However, I have to say, I can understand a county court baliff failing to recover money, they have no power of entry, but a high court enforcement officer will, if required, simply force entry, remove goods to the value and then settle up with the claimant once they've been sold.

County court baliffs are a waste of time and money imho - so much so that they don't exist where I live (banned under the terms of the good friday agreement).

I'd be interested to know which enforcement routes JoeMc used.