UK Debt Collection Agencies

Many of these debt collection letters are very heavily worded and threatening all sorts such as:-

 - County court judgment

 - Warrant of execution

 - Attachment of earnings

 - Charging

All designed to make you call them promptly and pay.

I do some debt collection work in both Spain and UK and make use of EU regulations in enforcing on one country's judgments in another.

I have sucessfully enforced on UK judgments registering charges against Spanish owned assets.

I have done a little bit of work for Spanish banks and I would love to do more but their legal departments do not like working with an outsider but the day will come when they realise they need someone like me to bridge the two legal systems.

My UK debt collection work is very easy and I can sit in Spain filing county court claims with ease. I do all my own drafting and the UK courts have no difficulty communicating with me in Spain.

In Spain it's a bit slower and I need to use half-brained procuradors and the Spanish judges are slow in rubber stamping my UK judgments and advising property registry thus protecting my client's position.

But anyone reading this thread do not think debts of one country cannot be pursued in another. Community debts tends to be small so sometimes not worth great effort other than send threatening or heavy worded letter but other high value debts are worth the effort! I don't bother with community debts.

Anyone interested in this area might want to read up on Council Regulation (EC) no. 44/2001

We on our development are using this company with a degree of success. The MD is a qualified UK lawyer and has always laised closely with the community he is acting for in terms of charges and timescales to pay. The only people who might be concerned are those who do not and have not paid their fees and feel it is OK for the rest of us to subsidise them. If you pay your fees like the rest of us then you will not hear from anybody.

I would like to echo John's reply.

Our Community has used Steve Kettlewell for over a year now with great success. At all times we have found him and his team work very professionally and I personally have no difficulty in recommending him to any other Community (and have done so on very many occassions) and will continue to do so with complete confidence.

Before engaging Steve to act for us, we went through due process, and our Community solicitors completely approved and sanctioned the use of Steve and the European Directive he uses.

Steve gives Delinquent Debtors every chance to bring their accounts up to date, and goes to great lengths to do so before taking further action. We felt as a Community that we would prefer the money coming in even with stage payments and only ever sanction legal action as a very last resort, and only after several months of exploring every other avenue.

At the end of the day Community Fees must be paid -regretably there are Owners all over the Costas who feel they can have sit back, ignore their Community Fees, and requests to pay, and let everyone else suffer. They must think they are untouchable. They are not.

Personally, I think many Owners will struggle to pay their Fees but still manage to do so - they have every right to be pretty incensed when fellow Owners get shirty about paying their share.

If Owners have let their Fees rack up over a considerable period of time, they then can't complain about interest charges or penalties, that's their own fault.

Indeed we had one UK Owner who was taken through the Spanish Court - his legal bill (from memory) was almost €4000 on a €2500 debt, so anyone should be thankful if it's Steve on their trail at a fraction of that cost.

 My Community have been using Kettlewell for over a year. None of our debtors have been taken to Court yet. Rather Kettlewell have bent over backwards to try and accomodate these none payers.

Kettlewell are not crooks nor are they practising deception .The only crooks are those people not paying their fees and sponging off me...

Cough up Byron....

The payment of community fees is a very serious matter.

Initially those paying are told they must continue to pay and not do anything against those not paying such as ban them from using facilities.

But in the extreme those paying are no longer able to maintain the community and eventually harsh decisions have to be taken such as close facilities to all.

I know of many communities that are struggling to stay afloat and tough decisions do need to be made to ensure no more money is spent than is actually collected in each month. Many of these are the more upmarket luxury apartments with all manner of facilities - the dream lifestyle - but for those living there an absolute nightmare!

Below is a communication issued over the w/e from a vast hotel like facility which basically says becuase of lack of funds they can't pay maintenance companies and now are shutting down certain facilities.