Suing someone in England and Wales no longer requires a solicitor, a court building or even a printer. Money Claim Online and its newer sibling, the digital money claims service on GOV.UK, let anyone with a defendant's name and address issue a claim for a fixed sum from a web form. The issue fee starts at £35 for claims up to £300 and rises through bands to £455 for claims between £5,000 and £10,000 — the ceiling of the small claims track. The form asks what happened, what is owed and why; the court serves the paperwork; and if the defendant ignores it for 14 days, the claimant can enter judgment in default without anyone ever seeing a judge.
That accessibility is deliberate. The small claims track was designed so that ordinary consumers, landlords, tradespeople and freelancers could recover modest debts without professional help. Its defining rule is that costs barely shift: with narrow exceptions, the loser does not pay the winner's legal fees, only fixed costs and the court fees themselves. Hiring a solicitor for a £2,000 dispute therefore rarely makes financial sense for either side, and hearings are run on the assumption that both parties are representing themselves. Judges take an inquisitorial, plain-English approach; the strict rules of evidence are relaxed; and a typical hearing lasts under an hour in a district judge's room rather than a courtroom.
Before any of that, the rules expect the claimant to have tried to settle. The pre-action protocol requires a letter before claim setting out the debt and giving the other side time to respond — 14 days for a straightforward consumer matter, 30 days where a business is chasing an individual under the debt protocol. Skipping this stage can cost the claimant interest or fees even if they win. Once a claim is issued and defended, both parties complete a directions questionnaire, and for money claims under £10,000 the case is now referred to HMCTS's free Small Claims Mediation Service — a one-hour telephone appointment that has been a required step since May 2024 rather than an optional one. A large share of defended claims settle there, months before a hearing date would arrive.
If the case does reach a hearing, the claimant pays a further fee, scaled from £27 to £346 by the value of the claim, and each side sends its evidence — contracts, invoices, photographs, message threads — to the court and to each other in advance. The judge decides on the balance of probabilities and usually gives the decision on the day, ordering payment in full, by instalments, or dismissing the claim.
Winning is the easy half
The judgment itself moves no money. What the winner holds is a county court judgment, and a CCJ is an instruction, not a bank transfer. If the defendant pays within one calendar month, the entry is removed from the Register of Judgments, Orders and Fines; if not, it sits on the register for six years, wrecking the debtor's access to credit — which is often the only pressure a claimant has.
When pressure fails, enforcement is a second, separately priced process. A warrant of control sends county court bailiffs to seize goods, for a further fee. An attachment of earnings order deducts instalments from the debtor's wages, which requires the debtor to be employed. A third-party debt order freezes and diverts money sitting in the debtor's bank account, which requires knowing where they bank and the account holding funds on the day. A charging order secures the debt against property, then waits — possibly years — for a sale. Judgments over £600 can be transferred to the High Court, whose enforcement officers have stronger powers and a commercial incentive to collect, though their fees fall on the debtor only if collection succeeds.
Each route depends on the debtor having something reachable: wages, a bank balance, goods worth seizing, equity in a property. Against a defendant with no assets, or a company that folds and re-registers, a judgment can be worth nothing at all, and a meaningful proportion of CCJs are never satisfied. The practical advice that flows from this is unglamorous but decisive: before spending £35 on the form, work out whether the person you are suing can actually pay. The court will decide who is right. It will not find the money.
