Got a CCJ From a Parking Charge? What to Do Next

What a parking CCJ actually is

A parking company took you to court and won. A County Court judgment, or CCJ, says a court has formally decided you owe that money. It's the last stage of the process our laws and fines guides cover.

It isn't a fine. A private parking charge is a contract claim, so the company sued you the way any business sues anyone. Nobody prosecuted you and no criminal record exists.

The judgment now sits on the Register of Judgments, Orders and Fines. Registry Trust has kept that register for England and Wales since 1985, on behalf of the Ministry of Justice. Anyone can search it. Lenders do.

Entries stay on for six years from the date of the judgment. Not from the day you parked, and not from the day you found out.

Two things take an entry off early. You can pay the whole amount within one month of the judgment date. Or you can get the judgment set aside.

Paying later does neither. The entry stays for the full six years, marked as paid.

One thing to settle before you read on. CCJs, the Register and the court rules below are England and Wales only. The law differs in Scotland and in Northern Ireland, and gov.uk points Scottish readers to the Accountant in Bankruptcy.

Why it happened without a hearing

Most people in this position never saw a judge. That's normal, and it's worth understanding, because how the judgment was entered decides which route out you get.

Judgment by request, not by decision

Where a claim is for a specific sum of money, the claimant doesn't need a hearing to win it. Under rule 12.4 of the Civil Procedure Rules, they file a request on a standard form. Rule 12.1 calls what follows a judgment without trial.

No judge weighs up the parking signs. Nobody looks at whether you were the driver. The rule only asks whether you replied in time.

Rule 12.3 sets that test out. At the date judgment is entered, you must have filed neither an acknowledgment of service nor a defence, and the time for doing so must have run out.

That time is short. Rule 15.4 gives you 14 days after the particulars of claim are served. File an acknowledgment of service and it becomes 28 days. You and the claimant can also agree a further 28 days, as long as you tell the court in writing.

Where the papers went

The common story is that the claim went to an old address. That's a real argument, but it's weaker than most websites suggest.

Rule 6.9 lets a claimant serve an individual at their "usual or last known residence". A stale address can still be good service. Posted first class, the claim form is treated as served on the second business day afterwards. Whether you opened it doesn't come into it.

There is a limit on that. If the claimant had reason to believe you no longer lived there, rule 6.9(3) makes them take reasonable steps to find your current address. If they find it, they have to serve you there. If they can't, they must consider another place or method and apply to the court for permission to use one.

Only when neither is possible can they fall back on the last address they knew.

Removed, or just marked paid?

This is where most advice online goes wrong, and the difference is worth real money to you.

Regulation 11 of the Register of Judgments, Orders and Fines Regulations 2005 has two limbs. They do very different things.

Paid in full within a month

If the debt is satisfied one month or less from the date of the judgment, the court asks the Registrar to cancel the entry. Regulation 16 says the Registrar must then cancel it. The entry comes off the register entirely.

Three conditions sit inside that sentence, and each one catches people.

The debt has to be satisfied in full. A part payment doesn't start the clock.

The month runs from the judgment date. It doesn't run from the day the letter reached you, or the day a lender turned you down.

And the court has to know. Regulation 11 only bites where the payment "comes to the attention of the appropriate officer". Gov.uk is blunt about what that means in practice: write to the court to say you've paid, and send proof of payment from the company you owed.

Paid after a month

If the debt is satisfied more than a month after the judgment date, the court asks for the entry to be endorsed instead. The Registrar marks it as satisfied.

The entry stays for six years. Anyone searching sees a paid CCJ rather than an unpaid one, which is better, but it's still a CCJ on your file.

For most people reading this, the month has already gone. That's the honest position and it's worth facing early, because it changes which of the two remaining routes is worth your money.

Set aside

A judgment that has been set aside or reversed goes in the cancellation limb too. Regulation 11(2)(b) puts it there. So a successful set-aside application clears the register entry in the same way that paying inside the month does.

That's the only route left once the month has passed.

Getting the certificate

You can ask the court for written proof. Apply in writing, or on form N443, to the court handling your case. It costs £19, by cheque payable to HMCTS, or by card if you ring the court.

Paid within the month, you want a certificate of cancellation. Paid later, a certificate of satisfaction.

If the parking company won't confirm the payment, you can still apply. Send your own evidence instead, a bank statement for instance. The court writes to the company, and gov.uk says that if it doesn't reply within 30 days, the court decides on your evidence.

Applying to set the judgment aside

Setting aside means asking the court to cancel the judgment and, usually, let you defend the claim properly. There are two grounds, and it matters which one you're on.

The court must, or the court may

Rule 13.2 is the mandatory one. The court must set the judgment aside if it was wrongly entered, and it lists three ways that happens.

Judgment in default of an acknowledgment of service, where a condition in rule 12.3(1) or 12.3(3) wasn't met. Judgment in default of a defence, where a condition in 12.3(2) or 12.3(3) wasn't met. Or the whole of the claim was already satisfied before judgment was entered.

The rule 12.3 conditions are worth reading against your own paperwork. A claimant may not take default judgment in three situations.

One is where you have a pending application to strike out the claim, or for summary judgment. Another is where you have already paid the whole claim, including costs. The third is where you admitted the money claimed but asked for time to pay.

Rule 13.3 is the discretionary one, and it's where most parking cases land. The court may set the judgment aside if you have a real prospect of successfully defending the claim, or if there is some other good reason.

One thing worth knowing before you weigh up the risk. Regulation 9 of the same 2005 Regulations exempts a judgment from the register where the hearing was contested. So if you win the set-aside, defend the claim at a hearing and still lose, that second judgment isn't registered.

It goes on later only if the company acts. Enforcing the judgment does it. So does asking the court to make you disclose your finances, or asking for a certificate of judgment. Either side applying for an instalment order does it too.

Losing at a hearing isn't the same as losing by default.

Note the words. "Must" and "may" are not the same, and Citizens Advice warns plainly that getting an order set aside can be very difficult.

Promptness

Rule 13.3(2) says the court must have regard to whether you applied promptly. It sets no deadline, so don't trust any page that gives you one.

What it means in practice is simple enough. Apply as soon as you know, and be ready to say when you found out and what you did next.

The form, the fee and the hearing

You apply on form N244. Gov.uk says the fee may be £321, and the current civil court fees list confirms that figure for an application on notice.

An application by consent, or without notice, is £126. That's the cheaper route if the parking company agrees to the judgment being set aside, which some will do once they've been paid.

You will have to attend a private hearing. Gov.uk is explicit that if you don't turn up, your application is rejected and you're left owing the judgment amount. Rule 13.4(3) also requires the application to be supported by evidence, so put your dates and documents in the statement rather than saving them for the hearing.

One thing the application doesn't do on its own is stop enforcement. Nothing in the rules pauses a bailiff because you have applied. Rule 83.7 lets you apply for a stay of execution, but you have to ask for it, with a witness statement setting out why.

Was the claim properly against you?

That "real prospect of successfully defending" test needs something to bite on. For a parking claim, the usual something is whether the company was entitled to chase the person it named.

Private operators get at the registered keeper through Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012. Gloss that properly. Gov.uk defines the registered keeper as the person who keeps the vehicle on the public road and has to tax and register it. That is "not necessarily the owner".

It needn't be the driver either, which is the whole reason Schedule 4 exists.

The right to recover from the keeper only applies if two things hold. The conditions in paragraphs 5, 6, 11 and 12 must be met, so far as they apply. And the car must not have been stolen when the parking began. Even then, the right can only be used after 28 days from the day the Notice to Keeper was given.

Several things put a claim outside that route altogether.

• The land has to be "relevant land". A highway maintainable at public expense is excluded. So is a parking place provided or controlled by a traffic authority, which means a council in most cases. So is any land where parking is under statutory control.
• If the company knows both the driver's name and a current address for them, the first condition fails.
• A stolen vehicle is out.
• Hire and lease cars run on a separate track, covered in our guide to a PCN on a hire or courtesy car.

One more point is worth checking against the judgment sum. Paragraph 4(5) caps what can be recovered from a keeper at the amount specified in the Notice to Keeper, less anything paid since. Be careful reading that across, though. Court fees and fixed costs are added on top and aren't the parking charge itself, so the totals won't match exactly.

None of this makes a claim bad on its own. The Supreme Court dismissed Mr Beavis's appeal in ParkingEye Ltd v Beavis in 2015, holding that an £85 overstay charge was neither a penalty nor unfair. Parking charges are enforceable. The question is only whether this one was enforceable against you, through the route the company used.

There is also a time limit on the claim itself. Section 5 of the Limitation Act 1980 gives six years from when the cause of action arose for a simple contract claim. That's a defence to bringing the claim. It doesn't wipe a judgment that already exists.

What it costs, and what you might still owe

The judgment sum is usually more than the parking charge was. Two things get added: the court fee the company paid to issue the claim, and fixed costs.

Issue fees run on a scale. A claim up to £300 costs £35 to issue. More than £300 and up to £500 costs £50. More than £500 and up to £1,000 costs £70.

Most parking claims sit in those three bands.

Two pieces of good news, such as they are.

The first is interest. A county court judgment only carries statutory interest if it's for £5,000 or more, under the County Courts (Interest on Judgment Debts) Order 1991. A parking judgment is nowhere near that, so the sum doesn't grow while it sits there. Any interest you can see is likely pre-judgment interest already baked into the total.

The second is help with the fee. If you're on a low income you can apply for money off, or for the whole fee to be covered.

Gov.uk's current thresholds are a reported income of £1,420 or less if you're single, or £2,130 with a partner. Add £425 for each child aged 0 to 13, and £710 for each aged 14 or over. Savings usually have to be under £4,250, or under £16,000 if you or your partner are 66 or older.

Income-based JSA, income-related ESA, Income Support, Universal Credit with earnings under £6,000 a year and Pension Credit (Guarantee Credit) all qualify.

You can apply before or after paying, and claim a fee back within three months.

Now the bad news, and it's the one nobody mentions. People assume "small claims" means nobody can charge them costs. Rule 27.14 does restrict costs on the small claims track, to court fees, fixed issue costs, travel and a few capped sums.

But rule 27.14(1) only applies once a case has been allocated to that track. A default judgment is entered before allocation ever happens. So the small claims costs protection never applied to your judgment, and it doesn't cap costs on a set-aside application either.

If it came from a council, this isn't a CCJ

Worth a quick check, because the two routes look similar and the forms are different.

An unpaid council penalty charge notice doesn't become a CCJ. It becomes a charge certificate, giving you 14 days to pay the original charge plus 50%. After that the council registers it at the Traffic Enforcement Centre and you get an order for recovery.

You then have 21 days to pay or to challenge. The challenge form is a TE9, not an N244, and bailiffs follow if you do neither.

Which TE9 depends on the ticket. There's one for parking PCNs and, outside London, moving traffic contraventions issued on or after 1 June 2022. A separate TE9 covers Dart Charge, Mersey Gateway and clean air zone PCNs. Form PE3 covers low emission zone PCNs, London-borough moving traffic contraventions, and moving traffic contraventions outside London from before 1 June 2022.

Sending the wrong form wastes the 21 days. Our guide to disputing a UK parking fine sets out both routes from the start.

Where to get free help

Two places, both free, both worth using before you spend £321.

Citizens Advice has trained debt advisers and can look at your paperwork with you. Their own guidance says to talk to an adviser before making a set-aside application, and that's sound.

The court handling your case is the second. It can tell you the judgment date, confirm what was served and when, and send you copies. Staff can't give legal advice, but they can give you the dates that decide everything else.

One thing not to do: don't ignore it. An unpaid judgment can lead to bailiffs, an attachment of earnings order taking money from your wages, or a third-party debt order freezing your bank account. If you can't pay what the court ordered, form N245 lets you ask to change the terms, and the Breathing Space scheme gives temporary protection through a debt adviser.

One last thing worth saying, because people ask. A judgment against you is a record about you, not about the car. It won't show up on a free car check, which reads the vehicle's own record, and it doesn't follow the car when you sell it.

Common questions