How can a judgment creditor extract payment by the judgment debtor of enforcement fees and interest (especially those of an enforcement agent) which arise out of an unsuccessful attempt at execution? Can they, for example, be added to the judgment debt on a subsequent charging order application?
The court is empowered by CPR 44.2 to award costs to the judgment creditor which have been reasonably incurred and are reasonable and proportionate in amount even though they relate to an enforcement attempt which has been unsuccessful. It is surprising, for example, that when a judgment creditor abandons an application for a third party debt order because the third party is not holding any money due to the judgment debtor that the judgment creditor very rarely asks for their abortive fixed costs to be added to the judgment debt. What, however, the judgment creditor is not entitled to do is to unilaterally add abortive enforcement costs—and those incurred through unsuccessful execution can now be quite substantial—to the judgment debt when they come to make their next attempt
