DMBM666520 - Enforcement action: county court proceedings: reviewing the enforcement strategy: simultaneous enforcement of a judgment

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Under Part 70.2 of the Civil Procedure Rules 1998 a judgment creditor may use more than one method to enforce payment of a judgment at the same time, except where an enactment, rule or practice direction provides otherwise. The relevant enforcement methods are:

• third party debt order
• writ of fi fa or warrant of execution
• attachment of earnings order
• charging order.

You may take most of these enforcement methods simultaneously but there are some considerations as to timing that you need to bear in mind depending on the particular permutation. The simultaneous enforcement table gives the relevant details (DMBM666530).

You can also take more than one action of the same type, for example several third party debt orders may be issued at the same time where the judgment debtor has more than one bank or building society account or other debt due to him or her.

You will need to be flexible and innovative in order to maintain proper control of cases involving multiple and simultaneous enforcement action. You may require a manual B/F system rather than relying on a single date as in the IDMS process.

Where a judgment has been entered against two or more defendants for a joint debt, you should enforce simultaneously against all judgment debtors. Be careful though not to secure what is called ‘double satisfaction’ that is being paid twice for the one judgment debt.