Note: s93 of the Tribunals Courts and Enforcement Act 2007 was bought into force on 1 October 2012. This enables a charging order to be made even though the client has not defaulted in payment of the instalment order. When deciding whether or not to make a charging order, the court is required to take into consideration the fact that the client has not defaulted. Section 93 does not apply to any judgment or order under which the client is required to pay the sum of money by instalments space made before 1 October 2012. In such cases, a charging order cannot be made unless the client defaults on the instalment order.

It appears that they are making it even easier for creditors to secure their unsecured debts.

Many creditors are now applying to the courts to make a judgment for immediate payment in order to obtain a charge at the earliest opportunity.

Office of Fair Trading:

The OFT’s has expressed concerns with regard to thee apparent failure of lenders considering their customers’ financial situation  prior requesting the court to place a charging order over a property. The OFT said that they had found evidence that lenders were not always taking into account their customers’ efforts to repay debts using a debt management plan or other payment method. The OFT also found that a large percentage of charging orders were made to secure fairly small amounts of debt.

Preventing a Charging Order:

Charging Orders, it is notoriously difficult to convince a judge not to allow a charging order to proceed. If a creditor is going to court for a charging order, you should do everything you can to prevent this from happening. Should you not be able to prevent this, you can always ask the court for conditions attached to the charging order.

I am currently looking into alternative ways that a charge can be stopped. I recently also came across a case where a creditor removed a charge from a property, I am looking into seeing why this came about.