Parking Ticket CCJs: How a Simple Fine Can Damage Your Credit

The one thing that’s worse than getting a parking ticket is ending up with a CCJ because of a parking ticket. If you think that sounds like an unlikely situation, then you’d be surprised at how many people end up with them each year.

So, how can an annoying, but ultimately fixable, parking fine end up in court, followed by a seriously damaging County Court Judgement? Some cases are down to willful neglect, and that would be someone who chooses to ignore the ticket, then the paperwork that follows from the parking enforcement company and then the court.

There is a growing number of cases, however, that are against consumers who, if they knew, would never let a parking ticket get as far as court.

When does a parking ticket turn into a CCJ?

It’s worth thinking about how a parking ticket turns into a CCJ. Typically a parking ticket would require you to make a payment to the parking enforcement company. They will give you a set period of time to make the payment, sometimes discounting the fine if you make a fast payment to them. If no payment is received, then they will usually write to the owner of the vehicle that has been fined. We’ll come back to that bit later, as it’s important.

If they don’t receive a payment, or a response, from reminder letters they can, and usually do, head to the small claims court in order to enforce the debt or give the debt to a debt collection agency. The latter will send reminder letters and then themselves decide whether to take the debtor to court.

If the decision is made to move forward to court, then the court itself will start to arrange the case, and will write to the owner of the vehicle, using the address at the DVLA. If there is no response from you then the court could issue a default judgment (meaning that no case actually needs to take place) against you.

What difference does a CCJ make?

Having a CCJ on your credit record might seem trivial to some. If you’re not planning on moving house, getting a loan or a new credit card then it could seem it will have no impact on your life. The reality, unfortunately, is that any business that carries out a credit check on you could see the CCJ, and then change their opinion of you because of it. If you have car insurance, or even home insurance, then that could show up at your renewal point and mean you either pay more, or your insurer chooses not to insure you at all.

Employers may carry out a credit check on you, in fact if you work in Financial Services, the police or the military then this carries an even greater risk of impacting your work. Renting a property could become harder, and certainly getting a loan or a mortgage would.

CCJs sit on your file for six years, which is a long time. You may not be planning to move house, or change jobs, right now, but you never know how your life will change.

Why would a sensible person get a CCJ from a parking ticket?

Let’s pretend that you’re a regular person who takes things like letters from courts seriously. Why wouldn’t you sort out the parking ticket (likely paying more if it’s passed to a debt collection agency) before it gets to the point where you have a CCJ?

The reason comes from where the parking company and the court get your address from, which is the DVLA, and it’s based on your car registration. You may have moved house and not updated your V5C, or you updated it too late. The parking enforcement agency has taken your address at a point in time, and unfortunately ,when they did that, the address was incorrect.

It could also be that you sold your vehicle, and the V5C wasn’t updated in time, meaning that the new owner picked up a parking ticket, but your name and address are attached to the car.

In these situations, you’re going about your life as if nothing is happening, but in the background, there’s a legal process taking place that can have a big impact on your future, but you know nothing about it.

As you might expect the amount of time it takes from the original parking ticket to getting a CCJ is months and in some cases years. That can cause more addressing issues, as you may move during that time.

Can you remove a CCJ from your credit file?

The obvious question, if you have a CCJ from a parking fine, is can it be removed? As you’d expect, it’s not easy to have a CCJ wiped from your credit report. It’s meant to be permanent so that financial services companies can determine the risk of working with an individual.

The court does, however, have to act fairly, and that means in some situations if you can prove that you did not receive the paperwork from them then you can have the CCJ set aside.

The process to request this requires filing court papers, and the courts system can be somewhat slow. Often when someone finds out they have a CCJ it’s because they’re about to do something important – like moving home, or renewing a financial product – which means you need a fast response.

There’s two paths for filing to have a CCJ set aside: filing the paperwork yourself, or using a third party. With the latter there’s a cost, but this should be stated up-front and be transparent in terms of whether there are additional fees. The benefit of using a third party is that they are experienced, and will file the correct paperwork, and complete it correctly.

We reached out to one organisation who specialises in CCJ Removal (CCJ Removal Services) and asked them what they see happening with consumers.

“More and more people are coming through our door who have had no idea whatsoever that they have a CCJ on their credit file. In most cases, they find this out because a third party tells them, like a bank for a mortgage or their insurance company. It throws a spanner in the works for them and adds a lot of stress. These are not people who you would expect to have a CCJ, these are doctors, company directors, people who work in the armed forces. We not only have to help them get rid of the CCJ, firstly we have to work out where it has come from. It’s often a puzzle that needs to be solved first”.said their Director of External Affairs, Luke Memory F.Inst.Pa.

They have also created a comprehensive guide to removing a parking ticket CCJ.

Why do parking companies take people to court?

There are few companies less liked than those that enforce parking tickets. I’m certainly not going to defend them, but if there are addressing issues with a ticket then they will see the non-response, and non-payment, as being the actions of someone who does not want to follow the rules. They will usually have a process in place which means that outstanding debts either go legal, or they get sold to another company who then enforces the debt.

What they do isn’t personal, it’s just incredibly frustrating for those that would have paid the fine (begrudgingly).