Coodes Debt Recovery

Whether you are running a large corporation or a small enterprise, access to swift and effective debt recovery services is an essential part of financial and operational management. Our experienced debt recovery team are here to help you recover the funds owed to your business quickly and cost-efficiently. For straightforward debt recovery cases, our Debt Recovery service offers a highly effective, end-to-end service.

Stage 1 – Letter of Claim

Within two working days of receiving instruction, we will advise you on the best course of action for recovery of your debt.

In normal circumstances, the first step will be for us to send a Letter of Claim on your behalf within three working days of receipt of your instruction and our fixed fee. This usually results in payment and the end of the matter.

We will send you payment for the amount of the debt we recover on your behalf. This will usually be within three days of payment, subject to your choice of payment method.

Total cost to you: £70 plus VAT

Stage 2 – Issue Claim

Should the Letter of Claim not result in prompt payment, we can prepare and issue proceedings on your behalf. We will do this within three working days of receiving the Court fee and our fee.

Before we issue a claim, we may advise you to obtain an asset report for the debtor to discover whether they have any assets against which a judgment can be enforced i.e. whether it is worth suing. The cost for the report will range from £35 – £200 plus VAT, depending on the size of the claim. See Table A below.

When we issue your claim it will cover the initial debt, contractual or statutory interest, compensation where appropriate, the Court fee and recovery of fixed legal costs to issue.

Our fixed fees for the debt recovery process are as follows:

£50,001 – £100,000£5255% of value of claim

Stage 3 – Request Judgment

If the debtor either acknowledges the debt or does not respond to the claim we will apply for a Court order for you. This is known as a judgment. We will do this within three working days of receipt of your instructions. If the debtor disputes the debt, we will advise you immediately and provide separate advice on the best way to progress your claim outside of this fixed-fee service.

There is no Court fee for obtaining the judgment, but we will charge a fixed fee for the work undertaken to request judgment. Our fixed fees for requesting judgment in default for undisputed debt claims are as follows:

Once judgment is received, we will write to the debtor with a copy of the judgment to request payment – £65 plus VAT.

Stage 4 – Enforcement

There are several options available for the enforcement of a County Court Judgment and we will discuss which is the best option for you depending on the financial position of the debtor. We will contact you once we have received the Order and offer our advice on this stage (see Table A for possible further action and costs).

Here are some examples of our fixed fees for enforcement.

In cases where the other party disputes the debt, our experienced Commercial Disputes team can assist you in dealing with a defended claim and will advise on the costs to do this. The fixed fees outlined above would not apply in these instances. However, we recognise how important it is for you to have an understanding of the potential cost of legal action and will discuss and, where appropriate, agree fixed fees, subject to complexity and nature of the stages at the time.

Table A – Optional Extras

Timescales

Your matter would usually take 3 – 5 weeks from receipt of your instructions to receipt of payment from the debtor if they pay on receipt of the Letter Before Claim and there is no requirement to issue court proceedings. Once a claim is issued to being paid by the debtor on receipt of the claim form or judgment order would usually take around 3 months. This is on the basis that the debtor pays promptly on receipt of Judgment. This also depends on the current court processing timeframes. If enforcement action is needed, the matter will take longer to resolve.

Managing your expectations

• While we can recover contractual or statutory interest, there may be instances where adding this to your debt will push the debt it into a different fixed-fee bracket in our tables above. We will tell you this at the outset.
• The VAT element of our fee cannot be reclaimed from your debtor if you are VAT registered.
• If a debt becomes disputed, we will talk to you about how best to manage that through our Commercial Dispute Resolution team. We may be able to continue working for you on a fixed-fee basis even if the disputed claim is a Small Claim (under £10,000).
• We reserve the right to consider each case individually and, where a case is not a straightforward debt recovery instruction, we may need to alter your fixed fee accordingly. We will advise you of this prior to undertaking any work.
• VAT is charged at the current rate of 20% unless otherwise stated.
• Debts over £100,000 fall outside the scope of this fixed fee service but our expert debt recovery team will still be able to help you.
• We will keep you informed if any stage is likely to take longer than we have advised. Sometimes this will depend on the Court’s capacity at the time.
• Under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998 (the Act), you can claim interest from the date for payment of each invoice. For applicable debts, if your debt comprises a number of invoices, we will claim interest under the Act on the total amount due. However, interest will only apply from the payment due date of the most recent invoice. Alternatively, we can claim interest in relation to each invoice, though this will attract an additional cost. We will discuss this with you.