Until now, the general approach has been that a company cannot claim privilege against its own...
If you have invoices of up to £100,000 which have not been paid by your customers and are overdue, our debt recovery team can help you in recovering the monies owed to you. Our experienced team would be happy to discuss your options and assist you in seeking recovery of the funds due.
Initial steps
For undisputed invoices, our work in preparing and dispatching a letter of claim (in a standard form) is £185 plus VAT. This fee is fixed and we will send you a written notification when we have despatched the letter of claim. The letter of claim notifies your customer that you have instructed solicitors and acts as a final warning before you issue court proceedings.
If the debt is not paid by the deadline set in the letter, our recovery team can continue to chase payment by post, email and telephone call. For each subsequent contact with the debtor (both made and received) prior to the issue of proceedings, we charge £18.50 plus VAT.
Still no payment…
Where we have sent a letter of claim and the customer does not pay within the specified time period, we can then issue proceedings for the sum due.
The fee we charge for issuing proceedings will vary depending on the amount you are claiming from the debtor. To calculate this, please see the “Court proceedings (relating to undisputed invoices)” table on our Costs Information page. Our fee, along with the court issue fee will be the amount required by us for the filing and issue of the claim.
In each circumstance, the amount claimable from the debtor and the court issue fee are added to the amount you are claiming from the debtor and are recoverable as part of the proceedings. We are happy to discuss this calculation with you, as part of our work.
Judgment
Once we have issued proceedings, your customer has 14 days to pay the sums claimed, file a defence, or file an acknowledgment of service. If your customer files an acknowledgment of service, they then have 28 days from the particulars of claim to file their defence.
If your customer has still not paid or has failed to respond to the claim, we can request default judgment on the sum claimed on your behalf. Our fees for doing so are fixed set out in the “Judgment” table in our Costs Information page.
Enforcement
Where the court has entered judgment against your customer but the customer is still failing to pay the amount due to you, we can assist you in enforcing the judgment against them.
There are various enforcement procedures available, and we can discuss with you the most suitable option, once you have obtained judgment. We set out the costs of this on our Costs Information page.