Debt collection in United Kingdom

There are several different legal routes which we can proceed down should our debt recovery methods be unsuccessful, detailed below –

Business to Consumer Debts

We can raise Judgment through the courts, once the court has granted us Judgment then we can pass this to a team of High Court Enforcement Officers or Bailiff’s depending on the size of the debt to enforce the Judgment we have received and seize assets to the value of the debt.

Disputed actions both Consumer and Business to Business can be very costly and time consuming. They can also involve clients attending court to give evidence. Should the Pursuer lose the case then they will need to pay the Defenders legal costs as well as their own. They may also have to pay any counterclaim raised by the Defender.

Business to Business Debts

We can raise Judgment against the company through the courts as we do with Consumer Debts. Once Judgment has been granted this can be passed to High Court Enforcement Officers or Bailiff’s to enforce the Judgment we have received. Another more effective and quicker way to recover debt if the company is well established and has assets is for us to serve a Statutory Demand on the company. The demand is served under a Section in the Insolvency Act and is sent to the company by Registered Post. Once this has been served it will give the company three days from receipt to pay or come to us with a proposal to get the debt settled. Should no response or agreement be reached we can use the expired demand in court to prove that the company has failed in its ability to repay its debts as they fall due and should be wound up accordingly. This is an extremely effective way of recovering money in the UK against a company that has substantial assets or maybe working on several high value contracts

Our clients instruct Debt Collect UK on a no collection no fee basis and we do not charge any upfront fees or registration costs.

We also work in connection with a firm of solicitors who after carrying out a risk assesment on a business or individual that we are pursuing will present a Winding Up Petition or Bankruptcy Petition free of charge. If the risk assesment fails then costs vary for raising proceedings and can be provided on request.

Our rates are as follows –

Business to Consumer Debts – Debts under a year old 15% of the total amount collected, over a year old 25% of the total amount collected.

Business to Business Debts – Debts under a year old 10% of the first £10,000 collected and 5% thereafter, over a year old 15% of the total amount collected.

We use UK Government Late Payment Legislation for add feasible Debt Recovery Costs and interest from the due date of our clients invoices to the original sums owed for Business to Business debt recovery. If we can get a company to pay then we have a good success rate in the recovery of the costs and interest which take up a large percentage of our fees if not all of them.

We are currently unable to add any additional fees to Consumer collections in the UK due to a change in legislation. We can however add court and legal costs to the sums owed if we have to raise proceedings.  

As we work on a no collection no fee basis for all of our cases our strategy on debt recovery has to be effective otherwise, we wouldn’t survive as we would not earn any commission if we failed to recover debts for our clients.

Over the last 20 years we have been in business we have tweaked and evolved our debt collection strategy depending on various factors in the market, such as our fee structure, UK financial performance, recessions, interest rate fluctuations and any new legislation put in place by our regulators.

If revenues drop then we will look at what processes and strategy we have in place and change this accordingly when we think a recovery could have been made and possibly hasn’t.

By using a CRM system or Microsoft Dynamics. We are currently looking into this at the moment.