DCBL Private parking (eurocarparks)

[merweetntr]

If I do apply for N244 is that guaranteed for the CCJ to be set aside?

I know the chances are low but if that happens, will there be a way to still get rid of the CCJ permanently?

It comes to the point now that I consider to just pay the “owed” debt and get rid of the CCJ as I assume that’s the only risk free option.

I might be wrong so please advise me

[b789]

This is exactly the point where you need to stop looking at the £313 N244 fee as some huge gamble and look at the actual reality of this case.

If this were some borderline situation where there was only a 50:50 chance of the judgment being set aside, then yes, there might be a rational argument for just paying the CCJ within a calendar month and treating that as the safer and slightly cheaper option. But that is not this case. This is plainly a judgment that should never have been entered at all. You had already filed an Acknowledgment of Service and a Defence. The CNBC acknowledged receipt of the Defence. DCB Legal later acknowledged the Defence and engaged with you about the live claim. So the odds of the court refusing to set this aside, and refusing to order repayment of the N244 fee, are extremely low.

You also need to keep in mind that if this claim had proceeded properly to a hearing and you had lost, the amount would almost certainly have been lower than the CCJ figure because the court would not have allowed the false added £70. In any event, this is a winnable claim. The real problem here is not that the claim was suddenly unbeatable. The problem is that DCB Legal and the CNBC have both messed this up and a default judgment has been entered when it should not have been. This is a glitch, not some final and irreversible defeat.

So you really have two sensible options. One is to weather the CCJ for now, continue pressing DCB Legal and CNBC/HMCTS, and give them a short final chance to correct it. The other is to issue the N244 now and get the matter before a judge. Either way, once the judgment is set aside it is expunged from your credit record. What you should not do is let fear push you into paying a judgment that should never have existed in the first place.

The choice should be simple. Just paying the CCJ is exactly what DCB Legal want. They and their client hope that you are "low-hanging fruit on the gullible tree and will pay it out of ignorance and fear". On the facts you have, that would be the irrational option, not the careful one.

[merweetntr]

I am going to apply for N244 today. 

Im not late right? As it’s about to be exactly 30 days tomorrow.

[b789]

There is no deadline to apply for the set aside. What the 30: days means is that the CCJ will be registered on your credit file. This will cause some financial issues if you apply for credit. However, once the CCJ is set aside, which could take several weeks or more, it will be expunged from your credit record and will not appear as ever having happened in your credit file.

Let me know how you get on with the N244 application and also, if you do hear back from either the CNBC/HMCTS or DCB Legal. Once you’ve submitted the N244, I’ll help you also submit a formal complaint to HMCTS and your MP.

[merweetntr]

Oh so the 30 day window was only if I decided to pay it off right?

[b789]

Yes. If you paid the CCJ within 30 days, it does not appear on your credit file. If it is paid after 30 days it will show on your credit file for 6 years, but will be marked as “Satisfied”.

If it is set aside, whether paid or not, it does not appear or will be removed from your credit file.

What you are doing by applying for the set aside, is getting the CCJ removed, whether it has appeared or not, on your credit file. In your case, it should never have been issued, which is why you will follow up this application with formal complaints.

[merweetntr]

Ok yet again thank you for your help. But I had one more concern.

I did file my defence and AoS. But even if those were done is there any possibility that the hearing date was appointed and as I didn’t inform them of my address change the letter stating the hearing date went to my old address and I’ve missed it?

And that way because I wasn’t aware of the hearing date I have missed it and as I didn’t show up they have ruled out a CCJ?

Sorry I’m not 100% sure if that’s how the court process is. This is just my way of understanding

[b789]

Yes, the failure to notify the court and DCB Legal of the move is not ideal, and a judge could in principle say that once you knew a claim was live you ought to have updated your address for service. So it would be wrong to pretend that point is completely irrelevant.

But it is not the decisive point here, and it does not cure the fundamental defect in the judgment.

The reason is simple. This CCJ was not entered on the basis that there had been a hearing which you missed, or that you failed to return some later form, or that the claim had been struck out and re-entered in some other way. The judgment specifically says that "you did not reply to the claim form". That is the basis on which judgment was entered. That statement is untrue. You did reply to the claim form. You filed an Acknowledgment of Service and then a Defence. There is evidence of both. The CNBC acknowledged receipt of the Defence, and DCB Legal later acknowledged it as well and engaged with you on the basis of a live defended claim.

That is why the address issue is secondary. Even if DCB Legal try to say that no N180 DQ, or whatever was received, or that later correspondence may have gone to the old address, that still does not justify a judgment which says you never replied to the claim form. A failure to respond later in the proceedings does not somehow erase the fact that the claim had already been acknowledged and defended. A defended claim does not revert to being undefended just because there may have been silence at a later stage.

So the sensible answer is this: yes, a judge may say you should have updated your address once proceedings were underway, and that point may attract some criticism. But it should not be fatal, because the actual judgment entered was based on something that was plainly false. The court is not being asked to excuse a defendant who ignored the claim. The court is being asked to correct a judgment that was entered in error on a claim that had already been defended.

That is the distinction that matters. Your move may explain why later paperwork was not received, but it does not make it true that you failed to reply to the claim form. And because the judgment was entered on that false basis, the set-aside remains very strong.

[merweetntr]

Hi, so I have received this email from CNBC an hour ago.

https://ibb.co/fVpjY0Cd

Does that change things?

I still didn’t apply for N244.

[b789]

This changes the analysis materially.

It is no longer a simple point that judgment was entered on a defended claim and that was the end of it. CNBC are now saying the Defence was received and processed, a DQ was issued, a sanctions order was then made for failure to return the DQ, and the Defence was struck out on 21 January 2026. On that version of events, the claimant will say they were entitled to request judgment after the Defence had been struck out.

So the address issue now matters more than it did before, because the obvious explanation is that the DQ, sanctions order and strike-out order all went to the old address and were never seen.

That said, there are still important problems in CNBC’s account.

First, the judgment wording saying you “did not reply to the claim form” is still plainly wrong if you did in fact file an Acknowledgment of Service and Defence. Even if the Defence was later struck out, that is not the same thing as never having replied to the claim form.

Second, if the Defence was struck out because documents were sent to an address you were no longer at, the real question becomes whether the strike-out and everything that followed should now be set aside because you did not receive those documents and therefore had no fair opportunity to comply.

Third, their email contains at least one obvious date problem. A sanctions order supposedly issued on 9 December 2026 before a strike-out on 21 January 2026 is impossible. That is almost certainly meant to be 9 December 2025, but it shows you now need the actual orders and notices, not just CNBC’s summary.

So the N244 is still the correct vehicle, but the application now needs to be framed more carefully. It should no longer be presented only as “judgment wrongly entered because a Defence already existed”. It now needs to say, in substance, that you filed an Acknowledgment of Service and Defence, then moved and did not receive the DQ, sanctions order or strike-out order, your Defence was struck out in your absence because those documents were sent to your old address, judgment then followed, and you acted promptly once you discovered it. The court should therefore set aside the judgment and also set aside the strike-out and related sanctions so the claim can be properly defended.

So yes, a judge could now say that failing to notify the court and DCB Legal of the address change contributed to the problem. That point has more force now than it did on the earlier understanding. But it is still not fatal. The key is to be frank about it, not defensive, and make clear that this was not deliberate non-engagement.

You do, however, now have to look at the cost position realistically. The prospects of getting the judgment set aside are still decent, but the prospects of recovering the N244 fee are no longer nearly as strong as before. A judge may well say that, even if the judgment and strike-out should be undone, the application became necessary in part because you failed to update your address during live proceedings. That means there is a real possibility that you succeed on the application but still do not recover the £313 fee. So the application remains arguable and may well succeed, but it is no longer sensible to treat fee recovery as a near-certainty.

That said, there is an important point in your favour on costs. Once DCB Legal were told what had happened, you offered them the opportunity to deal with matters by consent, which would have been the cheaper and more proportionate route. Instead of engaging with that promptly and properly, they deferred and still have not taken meaningful corrective action. That matters. Even if a judge concludes that your failure to update your address contributed to the original problem, DCB Legal’s later failure to cooperate with the cheaper consent route can still be relied on as a separate reason why the court should order them to bear some or all of the application fee. In other words, your earlier omission may explain how matters got into this mess, but their later conduct can still be criticised for forcing a more expensive contested application when a cheaper route had been put in front of them.

That in turn means there is now a practical decision to make. If the 30-day window to pay the CCJ is still open, then paying it may be the cheaper short-term exit. If, however, your priority is to remove the judgment and restore your chance to defend the claim properly, the N244 remains the proper route, but you should go into it on the basis that the fee may not come back even if you win. The fee position is now arguable rather than secure.

The immediate next step is to get the actual documents CNBC refer to: the DQ notice, the sanctions order, the strike-out order, and confirmation of the address each was sent to. Once those are seen, the witness statement and draft order can be corrected properly. The application is still very arguable, but it is now a different application from the one we were drafting earlier, and the costs risk must be factored into the decision.