Mr B complained that a court entered a county court judgment against him in error as it had not followed its procedures correctly. He said it took over a year for the court to remove the judgment from the public record, which had caused him embarrassment and a financial loss.
What happened
A council made a claim against Mr B. The court made a default judgment as Mr B did not respond to the claim. When Mr B applied for the judgment claim to be set aside, the court referred his case to a Residential Property Tribunal. The court removed the judgment sometime later, after the outcome of the tribunal was known.
What we found
The court had in fact followed their procedures correctly. We could not consider if the court had taken too long to remove the judgment as this was due to judicial decisions, which the law does not allow us to look at. The court had not apologised to Mr B about its failure to tell him about a cancelled hearing. It had previously offered to reimburse his travel costs. We also found that the court had destroyed its papers prematurely.
Putting it right
We asked HM Courts & Tribunals Service to apologise to Mr B for not telling him about the cancelled hearing and to review and amend its record keeping policy.
HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS)
UK
Did not apologise properly or do enough to put things right
Did not take sufficient steps to improve service
Apology
Taking steps to put things right