Commercial Litigation Solicitors in Oldham

Acting mostly for small and medium sized enterprises we recognise the serious impact caused to your business when bills are not paid on time.  We will treat your claim against a Debtor as one of utmost importance and seek to recover the sums due to you as promptly and as efficiently as possible.  Peter and Geoff are qualified Solicitors with a vast amount of experience of handling disputes, including debt recovery.

Letter Before Action

If you have not been able to recover the money due to you and you request us to carry out work on your behalf to obtain payment, we would initially do the following :-

• Take your full instructions and review the relevant documentation
• Undertake appropriate searches
• Send on your behalf what is known as a letter before action to the Debtor requiring payment within a specified period and indicating that a failure to pay within that period will result in a Court claim

We will undertake this step for you at a fixed fee to be agreed beforehand.  The fee will range from £150.00 + VAT to £250.00 + VAT depending on the complexity of the claim and the volume of documentation to be considered.  Generally speaking, however, the fee charged tends to be at the lower end of the bracket.

Time spent in considering and taking your instructions on any reply from the Debtor will be charged at an hourly rate of £200.00 + VAT.

We are happy to agree a bespoke fees package where businesses instruct us on a regular basis to pursue overdue debts.

Court Claims

Where it becomes necessary to commence Court action in relation to an unpaid invoice which is not disputed, the fees set out below will apply in relation to the preparation of a Court Claim Form, issuing the claim in Court, and subsequently entering Judgment.

If the other party disputes your claim by sending to the Court a Defence, we will discuss with you any further work required and provide you with revised costs information.  If a limited piece of work is required, we will agree with you a fixed fee.  If more extensive work is necessary, the hourly rate to be applied will be £200.00 + VAT.

For debts over £100,000 please contact us for an estimate.

Please note that to our fee will be added VAT, currently 20%.

You should note that:-

• It may be possible to recover as part of the Judgment against the Debtor certain fixed costs and the Court fee but the fixed costs may well not be enough to cover the whole of our fee
• The VAT element of our fee cannot be reclaimed from the Debtor
• Interest and compensation under the Late Payment Legislation may take the debt into a higher banding with a higher cost
• The fees quoted above do not include any action required (e.g instructing a Bailiff) to enforce a Judgment against a Debtor

Timescale

If the Debtor does not pay in response to the letter before action, the timescale from receiving your instructions to commence proceedings to obtaining Judgment is likely to be around 6-8 weeks. If the Debtor does not pay promptly on receipt of the Judgment and enforcement action is needed, the matter will take longer to resolve.

Alternatives

As an alternative to Court action you might wish to commence insolvency proceedings against the Debtor in the form of a Winding Up Petition against a Company or a Bankruptcy Petition in the case of an individual. Different fees will apply in that scenario.  Please contact one of our Fee Earners for a bespoke quotation.