If you have been in contact with your customer and exhausted all avenues to try and get a debt paid, you will need to start taking more formal steps to try and get them to settle the debt they owe you
- You would need to contact a solicitor and firstly get a letter before action sent to the business that owes you money by your solicitor.
- Assuming this remains unpaid, THEN you (your solicitor) can issue legal proceedings at the County Court for the debt + interest + costs to be paid within 14 days
- Then if it still remains unpaid you will get a County Court Judgement (CCJ) which is a court directive and allows you then to take enforcement action
- After that you could look at enforcement action and / or petition to wind the company up / make person bankrupt.
From 1 November 2022, the liquidation petition deposit (which you will need to pay) increases to £2,600 (Bankruptcy is £1,500) plus £302 court costs plus solicitors fees.
As the process progresses, the solicitor’s costs increases but hopefully if successful, most if not all the cost will be passed onto the business that owes you money, and the creditor will pay sooner rather than later through the process.
