He owns 100% shares in the business but it is a limited company.

I have a friend who is being made ill because of the scale of the costs in his bankruptcy proceedings. He had a judgement debt of £25,000 and this rose to £40,000 over time with interest. He didn't have the cash to pay as his income is modest. He was made bankrupt and an order for sale was made for his house. He has little understanding of the law and missed several court appointments leading to a sale hearing. The net result was that the house was sold by court order and £110,000 realised but all of the money went in costs and none was returned. He has a very small business with him and one part time employee on minimum wage clearing about £14,000 net each year. He has asked to be released from bankruptcy but it has been 5 years and the trustees claim there is now another £110,000 owing in costs. They are high end Manchester solicitors. They have appointed an accountant at £250 an hour to be on his board. His business is one man and a dog, not Carillion. It looks like he will never be released from bankruptcy and his health is deteriorating rapidly with the stress. Is there no rule for proportionality in costs in bankruptcy hearings? The accountant is asking for another £15k for costs this week before release will be considered. More than his annual turnover. Are there any ways out of this for him? Quarter of a million pounds for a £25k debt?

I hope things went well. I recently won an SD set aside application. I asked for costs on the basis of a personal litigant rate and was awarded 6 hours preparation at £10 per hour which is £60. This is useful as it is over the limit at which you can get a warrant to get the baillifs to go and see them to recover these costs. I am not sure in fairness that talk of indemnity costs etc. helps the personal litigant much. If you have paid your solicitor and can afford it, then you (or he/she) can ask for the costs from the court. If you can't, then go on your own, they won't usually turn up and you can say you have spent a lot of time on line preparing. What won't happen is that the court will make an award of costs so that you can go and instruct a solicitor to defend you or prepare a case. The Hammonds and Pro fit case is a commercial winding up petition case and subject to some different rules to personal bankruptcy in order to protect trading companies from being wound up unfairly. The statement by capquest is outrageous. "We do not accept the debt is not due but in view of the time considerations and use of the courts time we ask that the application be granted but with no order as to costs. If, as we anticipate we subsequently obtain information which enables us to prove that the debt is due we will proceed by issuing a claim in teh county court which will allow the applicant the opportunity to defend the claim" If anyone comes across this statement in a letter again in a SD hearing, point out the court that they have just made your case against them for you. Before issuing proceedings they should have been in possession of the CCA and secondly, the correct venue for hearing the case was the County Court as you had already raised a valid dispute. (But they can't do that as the haven't got the CCA. Catch 22 for them) This will increase the liklihood of costs being awarded. Hope you won!!

I now have a court order for costs against Lowells as a result of the clowns failing to turn up at an application to set aside an SD. It's enough to be enforceable by the court bailiffs. Has anyone done this yet, i.e. issued a warrant of execution against a DCA? Might be funny to see the bailiff walk out of the Lowells office with a PC under his arm? I might just copy one of their letters and send it back to them first saying what will happen if they dont pay! Cheers.

I asked for £60 and got it because of the preparation work in getting it sent aside and swearing the affidavit etc. Dont know if amyone has got any more?

Now that I have a judgement for costs against the Leeds Clowns for not turning up at a hearing to set aside an SD. I am going to need some threatomatic letters to send to them arent I? Anyone want to make some up? I hope they don't pay. I am going to go and watch the baillifs nick their paintings in the reception. Maybe we could all go! And my baillifs will turn up, not send a second class letter saying they called!

Do them the standard statute barred letter above, they happily stated it in writing to me, even quoting the made up amount and date. I'm keeping it in reserve. I have just won in getting an SD set aside with costs and am going hunting for them first!

When I contacted Lowells about a similar alleged debt that would have been clearly statute barred, they came up with a letter that said I made "an attempted payment" on a certain date within the 6 years. What? Did I nearly write a cheque, or did I trip and just miss the post box after writing a cheque or did I buy a postal order and then get really depressed and decide to give it to my hamster to chew? As I have only ever had one bank account in the last 20 years of which I have every statement, I can show that no such payment was made, as I am sure you can if you ask your bank. The statement they are making may be a throw away statement for them, but could constitute attempting to obtain money by deception or perverting the course of justice? What do you think?

Well, got back from court yesterday after applying to set aside a stat demand. No one from lowell turned up and they didnt file an afffidavit as ordered by the court. My application to set aside was on the basis that they hadn't complied with the CCA s78 etc, were in default, that the debt was Statute barred and the service of the SD by 2nd class post was an abuse of the process of the court. Judge said there was no question that the SD should be set aside and didnt even go into the facts, saying he had read my affidavit already. ** Useful tip. I had forgotten to ask for costs in the original affidavit (which you should do). I sent a copy of the court order ordering lowells to file an affidavit in reply to them by recorded delivery and told them that in view of the fact that they were in default, and had failed to file the affidavit in 14 days, if they didnt withdraw and tell the court they had done, I would ask for costs. I showed that letter to the district judge. (Who tend to be senior local solicitors, not the grumpy wigged type on the TV). The judge awarded £60 for costs for the work done. I got the impression that if I had lost wages, those could be considered too. The judge ordered that the costs be payed immediately as I also got the impression he wasn't impressed with the Leeds shower and their contempt for the legal process. I am now planning to go full steam to recover the costs if they dont pay. They can't mount a counterclaim as they don't have the CCA info and are in default! For those not experienced in the legal world, it isn't too daunting going to court. The hearings are in private in a back room and the News of the World won't be there reporting. Give it to 'em.

Thanks for the input. The SD does in fact say that he is indeed a goverment minister. However, the core of the issue is that the service is an abuse of process and clearly in breach of the guidance in the Court Practice Rules. The issue of the SD in the absence of a liquidated and proven debt is a breach of the accepted rules. The issue of an SD while in default of a CCR request is a breach of procedure and not attending or complying with the court order means 4 -0 to me as it stands and big bill to them. I have decided to take a stand and if this set aside does not stop the harrassment then I am going to explore a novel route and apply for a civil injunction. The measure of what is harrassment is what is reasonable. Where a company is faced with reasonable requests that they are ignoring (such as tell me what the account number relates to, I have never heard of it and show me where I signed anything, I never have), then persistence in the face of requests to stop (and 30 letters, more still arriving) goes beyond the reasonable. The costs clock will go through the roof and they will no doubt start listening. However this comes out, the minus sign will be on Lowell's account.

I have now been the recipient of 30 letters from the Red/Lowell/Hapmstons franchise over the last 12 months, every one threatening worse and worse outcomes, numerous calls (stopped by choose to refuse from BT), a campaign of texts to my landline that rang the phone at all times of the day, and now a service of a second class letter SD. I have had to take time off work to lodge and serve the set aside application. This is to be heard next month. They failed the CCA test etc. and have never sent a statement of account. I do not owe them or Barclaycard any money. In a vain attempt to stop the letters and harrassment, I sent them a statute barred letter. (I have not used a barclaycard since 1998). They responded saying that "an attempted payment in the sum of £xx was made on the XX date", i.e. within the 6 years time limit. I am fastidious in my financial records and there is no such payment to anyone in my records within 6 months of the date stated. Fortunately, this statement by themis now written in stone. Therefore, either Barclays are massively wrong or someone at the Lowell group has made up this amount to keep an imaginary debt alive. Where can I go with this. Would the police be interested if it was the latter? They won't (and can't) send evidence of this payment, it never happened. They havent got it. I am going to use a barrister to represent me at the set aside hearing. Lowells have not filed an affidavit as ordered within the time and have no written evidence of a debt to found a court case. I estimate that the costs will be £400+ and as they raised the stakes by trying to make me bankrupt, a barrister is totally justified. I am going to get my solicitor to file a notice of acting just before the hearing as they may think I am acting for myself and treat me with the usual contempt. It will start to get very expensive for them from now on.

Despite my written request sent by recorded mail, to be only contacted by letter and my recent request not to be contacted at all unless they could produce statments etc. as alleged debt was in dispute (They failed the CCA request many months ago), I am now being bombarded daily by calls from BT with text messages sent to my land line from Red telling me to contact them. The messages are being picked up by my answer machine and filling it up which is a real issue for me.I know about all the threat letters in respect of harrassment/report to TS etc. but is there an effective deterrent to this. Has anyone in these forums ever taken these people to court under the harrassment statutes? The calls have been every day this week.

The debt is over 6 years old and any reference to it has fallen off the credit reference agencies lists. I believe the original debt was a disputed one where I enforced my rights against the credit card supplier as the supplier of some defective goods went bust. I argues the case and Barclays gave up on it years ago until Lowell got involved. I have had many credit cards from Barclays including Mastercards and Barclaycards of different types. All of the debts were paid off over 6 years ago so I have no reference to Barclays at all on my report. Supplying only a copy of an application form from 30 years ago shows just how incompetent and unprofessional these people are.

I have recently been through the whole unpleasant aggressive multiple calls with Lowell and did a recorded delivery CCA request on them in December. The only thing that came back is a 30 year old copy of an application form for a Barclaycard. Now over three months since that request but they are batting on with the Hampton legal letter. No mention of the CCA anywhere on the form and no terms and conditions. I believe the original debt is statute barred but they say that a payment was made in 2002 to resurrect the time limit (which I dispute). They ignored the request for the statement so the agreement is unenforceable I presume without a court order. However, although they have failed to provide evidence of owning the debt, the original agreement or a statement, they did a search on my credit file at the end of January when they had already breached the CCA obligations. How can they do a search on my file when I have not applied for credit? There is no default registered at the moment. They have no rights to do so persuant to any agreement as they havent got one. This could have a prejudicial effect on my creditworthiness as lenders are aware of who Lowell are. What would you do next?

You can use a service called "choose to refuse" from BT. When a number calls that you want barrred, just put in your 4 digit pin number and they can't ring you again. It costs £8 per quarter but it stopped the lowell idiots calling me.