County Court Judgements

Most directors don’t think about County Court Judgments until one lands. And by then, the damage has already started.

They’re not rare. Commercial CCJs hit over 176,000 last year, the highest in seven years. And here’s what people miss. It doesn’t take a huge debt to trigger one. A few hundred pounds. A supplier dispute. An unpaid invoice. That’s enough.

The real damage isn’t the judgment itself. It’s what it does next. A CCJ sits on your credit file for six years. High street lenders may simply say no. Specialist lenders might still say yes, but at a higher rate, with tighter terms and less room to move. The money you can still get later ends up costing far more than the money you could have arranged today.

Ignore it, and there’s a next stage. Some call it the devil’s work. A winding up petition. Once that lands, there’s no room to sit on it. No delay. Every day matters.

I wrote about this exact moment in Before The Wave, the point where hesitation is the thing that actually costs you, not the debt itself.

So if someone’s threatening you with a CCJ, or worse, a winding up petition, don’t wait to see how serious it gets. The moment you catch wind that either one is even a possibility, pick up the phone. Not when the letter arrives. Not when the threat is confirmed. The second you sense it coming.

Because that early window is usually the only one where there’s still a real choice to make. Once it’s on file, the business has already lost ground.

I’m Mark Smillie. See you tomorrow.