How to Complete and Submit a CCJ Court Claim Form

If you have been sent a county court claim for money in England and Wales, you have 14 days from service to respond, and the way you respond to a CCJ court claim form is by returning the right document from the Response Pack that arrived with it: Form N9A if you admit the debt, Form N9B if you want to defend it or counterclaim, or the acknowledgment of service if you need more time to prepare a defence.¹ Miss that window and the claimant can ask the court for a default judgment without a hearing.²

What’s in the Response Pack

The Response Pack is sent with every claim for a specified amount of money. It contains three documents: Form N9A for admitting all or part of the claim, Form N9B for defending or counterclaiming, and a separate acknowledgment of service.³ You only fill in the one that matches your position. The claim form itself (N1) sets out the amount the claimant says you owe, why, and the court fee they paid to issue the claim.

The date on the envelope isn’t the clock. The date of service is treated as five days after the court issues the claim, and your 14 days run from there.⁴

Pick Your Response Before You Pick Up a Pen

Four routes are open to you. Choose first; the paperwork follows.

Admit the Full Claim

If you accept the debt in full, complete Form N9A. You can offer to pay the whole sum straight away or propose instalments based on what you can afford. The court reviews your financial details and either accepts your offer or sets its own repayment rate.

Admit Part of the Claim

If you owe some of it but not all, complete both forms: N9A for the portion you accept and N9B to defend the rest.⁵ You need to explain clearly why the disputed balance is wrong — a payment the claimant didn’t credit, an overcharge, a calculation error.

Defend the Whole Claim

If you dispute everything, complete Form N9B. Your defence must set out which allegations you deny and why.⁶ Common grounds include that the debt has already been paid, the amount is miscalculated, the claimant breached the contract first, or the debt is too old to enforce.

File an Acknowledgment of Service

If you cannot pull together a full defence inside 14 days, send in the acknowledgment of service. That buys you another 14 days, for a total of 28 from the date of service to file your defence.¹ It also prevents the claimant from applying for default judgment while you prepare.⁷

Completing Form N9A

N9A is built around your finances. The court uses it to decide whether any payment plan you propose is realistic, so vague answers hurt you.

Section 1 covers your personal details: name, address, date of birth, marital status. Section 2 is your dependants — children by age bracket (under 11, 11–15, 16–17, 18 and over) and anyone else you support financially.⁵

Section 3 is employment. Employees list employer and job title (both jobs, if there are two). Self-employed defendants give annual turnover and state whether they are up to date on National Insurance, income tax, and VAT — and if not, by how much. Unemployed defendants say how long they have been out of work. Pensioners tick the relevant box.⁵

Sections 4 and 5 ask about bank accounts and savings or investments: the bank or building society, the account type, and the current balance. Don’t leave out small balances. If the claimant challenges your figures, any omission looks evasive.

Section 6 is your income breakdown. List take-home pay (including overtime, commission, bonuses), Income Support, Child Benefit, other state benefits, pensions, contributions from others in the household, and anything else coming in. Use weekly or monthly figures and total them.⁵ Section 7 is outgoings: rent or mortgage, council tax, utilities, food, travel, insurance, hire purchase, other debts you are already repaying. The gap between the two sets your realistic offer in Section 11.

If the defendant is a company or partnership rather than an individual, attach a separate financial statement showing profit, loss, assets, and liabilities to support your offer.⁵

Completing Form N9B

N9B is shorter than N9A but needs more careful writing. The defence section is where cases are won or lost on paper.

Sections 1 and 2 are tickboxes: are you disputing all of the claim or part, and have you already paid any money toward the debt. Section 3 is your defence. Write a clear factual account of what happened and why the claimant is wrong. Go through each allegation in the particulars of claim and say whether you accept or deny it. Anything you fail to deny may be treated as admitted.⁶

Use specific dates, amounts, and reference numbers. If you dispute the whole claim, show you already paid or never owed the money. If you dispute part, specify what you admit, what you deny, and give your version where it differs. If you need more space, continue on a separate sheet with your claim number written at the top right and attach it securely.

Making a Counterclaim

Section 4 is for money you say the claimant owes you — a faulty product, a service that caused you loss, a separate agreement. You pay a court fee to issue a counterclaim; court staff can tell you the amount, which follows the same sliding scale as the original claim fee.⁶ You generally cannot counterclaim where the claimant is a Crown body such as a government department.

Sign and date Section 5 before sending. Keep a copy of everything.

Where and How to Send It

The deadline is receipt by the court within 14 days of service (or 28 if you filed the acknowledgment). The court counts the date it receives your form, not the date you posted it, so send early.

Paper forms go to the court address printed on the claim form. If the claim came through the Online Civil Money Claims service, respond by creating an account on the court’s online portal using your claim number (it will include the letters “MC”) and the security code from your claim notification. If it came through the older Money Claim Online (MCOL) system, you need a Government Gateway user ID and password plus your eight-digit claim number.⁸ Reply through whichever system the claimant used to file.⁹

What the Court Does Next

If you admitted, the claimant reviews your payment terms. Accept, and the court enters judgment by admission on your schedule. Reject, and a court officer decides what you can afford using the figures on your N9A.

If you filed a defence, the court sends it to the claimant and allocates the case to a track. Claims up to £10,000 normally go to the small claims track; £10,000 to £25,000 typically go to the fast track.¹⁰ Larger or more complex cases go to the multi-track. A judge issues directions — deadlines for evidence, mediation, witness statements — and if the case doesn’t settle, there is a hearing.

What Happens if You Miss the Deadline

No response is where real damage starts. Once the 14 days expire (28 with an acknowledgment), the claimant can ask the court to enter default judgment. For a specified sum, that is done on paper by filing a request form; no hearing is needed.² Judgment is entered for the full claimed amount plus costs, and enforcement can begin immediately.

Enforcement options available to the claimant include a warrant of control (enforcement agents attending to seize goods), an attachment of earnings order (deductions direct from your wages), a third-party debt order (freezing a bank or building society account), and a charging order against your property.¹¹ None of these are possible if you respond on time.

The judgment also lands on the Register of Judgments, Orders and Fines for six years, where lenders, landlords, and some employers will see it. Pay in full within one calendar month of the judgment date and the entry is removed; pay later and it stays, marked as satisfied.¹²

Applying to Set Aside a Default Judgment

If judgment was entered because you never received the claim, or you had a genuine reason for missing the deadline, you can apply to have it set aside. Use application notice Form N244 and send it to the court. The fee is £313.¹³

There is a private hearing. You need to explain why you didn’t respond and why you have a valid defence. Saying you cannot afford to pay is not enough; you have to show the claim itself is wrong or that you were never properly served. If you don’t attend, your application is rejected and the full amount still stands.¹³

Changing Payment Terms After Judgment

If your circumstances change after judgment — you lose your job, income drops, something unexpected comes up — you can apply to vary payment terms using Form N245.¹⁴ N245 can also suspend a warrant of control already issued. You will provide updated income and outgoings in much the same format as N9A.

Help With Court Fees

If you cannot afford court fees — the counterclaim fee or the £313 set-aside application — apply for a fee remission using Form EX160. You qualify automatically on certain means-tested benefits: Income Support, income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance, income-related Employment and Support Allowance, Universal Credit (if you earn less than £6,000 a year), or Pension Credit (guarantee credit).¹⁵

Without qualifying benefits you can still apply if your savings are below £16,000 and your income is low enough that paying would cause hardship. Send the completed EX160 with your court form; it must reach the court within 28 days of the date you sign it, or it may be rejected.¹⁵

One last point on what you may owe. The claim form shows a court fee on top of the debt. The claimant paid that to issue the claim, and if judgment is entered against you, it is normally added to the total alongside any other costs the court allows. The fee tier depends on the size of the claim, following the standard money-claim scale.¹⁶

1
Justice UK. Part 15 – Defence and Reply
2
Justice UK. Part 12 – Default Judgment
3
GOV.UK. N9 – Response Pack
4
GOV.UK. Claim Form
5
GOV.UK. Form of Admission (Specified Amount)
6
GOV.UK. N9B Defence and Counterclaim (Specified Amount)
7
Justice UK. Part 10 – Acknowledgment of Service
8
GOV.UK. Respond to a Court Claim for Money – Respond to a Claim Online
9
GOV.UK. Respond to a Court Claim for Money – Overview
10
Justice UK. Part 26 – Case Management – Preliminary Stage
11
GOV.UK. Make a Court Claim for Money – Enforce a Judgment
12
GOV.UK. County Court Judgments for Debt – CCJs and Your Credit Rating
13
GOV.UK. County Court Judgments for Debt – Cancel the Judgment
14
GOV.UK. Apply to Suspend a Warrant or Vary Payments Made by a Court Order
15
GOV.UK. EX160 – Apply for Help With Fees
16
GOV.UK. Make a Court Claim for Money – Court Fees