Some time ago I got a parking ticket and for one reason or another I just forgot to pay it. So in the end I got a court sommons. I filled the form in and said yes fine, I'm guilty and consequently paid the fine. So, does this mean I have a CCJ and stand no chance of ever getting credit again for the rest of my living days??

I wouldn't have thought so because parking tickets are dealt with under a different type of law.

CCJ - County Court Judgement
These are usually gains as a result of defaulting on a loan or rent arrears for example. They go through a civil court and are not the same type of thing, if you know what I mean.

This is difficult to explain but things like parking fines are breaches of the law of the land (to my understanding) so I think they come under "Criminal Law" (please feel free to correct me if I have this wrong) whereas a CCJ would be issue for default against an individual or company and you cannot be arrested for it.

There is something called The register of County Court Judgements that records CCJs.

You should be able to find them with Google, or drop in at the Courts. In fact, if you drop in at teh Courts then they'll probably be able to tell you.

Depending upon how long ago this was, if you DO have a CCJ then it will soon show on your Credit rating - check with experian and / or Equifax. Again, Google for their details.

Joe

You can get a full online credit history from Equifax for approx £8.

Depending on who issued your parking ticket, different courts deal with them. If it was a Penalty Charge Notice issued under the Road Traffic Act 1991, these are dealt with by the County Court. If it was issued by a police officer or Traffic Warden they are dealt with by the Magistrates court, as are 'Excess' or 'Standard' charge notices issued by the local authority.

As you can see its pretty complicated so its probably best that you do actually use one of the methods people have suggested to check as you can't ever be sure.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the info chaps, more complicated than I thought.

I checked and it was dealt with at the magistrates court, I found some info online and it seems that if I paid the penalty within 28 days - which I just did - I should be fine.

I've also ordered a credit check from Experian.

You can get credit reference files from Equifax, Experian and CallCredit at £2 per time:

Equifax: http://tinyurl.com/yi57

Experian: http://www.uk.experian.com/consumer/index.html?order

CallCredit: http://www.callcredit.co.uk/corporate_scripts/consumer.asp



hth !

Originally posted by uniB
So, does this mean I have a CCJ and stand no chance of ever getting credit again for the rest of my living days??

One small CCJ is not the end of the world - you will still be able to get credit, but not from every lender and maybe you'll have to pay higher rates.

However, once you pay up, you can have it marked as satisfied.

Originally posted by Andy
One small CCJ is not the end of the world - you will still be able to get credit, but not from every lender and maybe you'll have to pay higher rates.

However, once you pay up, you can have it marked as satisfied.


Quite right! Additionally, they only stay on your credit record for a limited period, which i think is six years - then they disappear.