Court fee on claim
This article is written by Mr Shahzad Tariq, Litigation solicitor. Mr Tariq is the Head of Immigration and Litigation at West London Solicitors. You can contact Mr Tariq directly on tariq@westlondonsolicitors.com
It is important to understand the court fee involved when you apply to the county court to claim money you are owed by a person or business.
The court fee
The court fee is based on the amount you are claiming plus interest.
| Claim amount | Fees |
| Up to £300 | £35 |
| £300.01 to £500 | £50 |
| £500.01 to £1,000 | £70 |
| £1,000.01 to £1,500 | £80 |
| £1,500.01 to £3,000 | £115 |
| £3,000.01 to £5,000 | £205 |
| £5,000.01 to £10,000 | £455 |
| £10,000.01 to £200,000 | 5% of the claim |
| More than £200,000 | £10,000 |
How to calculate the interest
You need work out the interest on the claim. If you are owed money by another business you charge interest on late commercial payments. This is 8% plus the Bank of England base rate for business to business transactions also known as statutory interest. The statutory interest rate will not apply if there is a different rate in a contract. For other debts, the rate is usually 8%.
The calculation is as follows:
- Work out the yearly interest: take the amount you’re claiming and multiply it by 0.08 (which is 8%).
- Work out the daily interest: divide your yearly interest from step 1 by 365 (the number of days in a year).
- Work out the total amount of interest: multiply the daily interest from step 2 by the number of days the debt has been overdue.
What if the claim amount is not known
You cannot make an application online, you will use a paper claim. You will have to estimate the range from the above table. You would decide to leave the amount section blank, the court will assume your claim is more than £200,000 and in that instance the fee will be £10,000.
Getting help paying the court fee
You can make a separate application for money off a court fee. You are able to do this before or after you pay the fee subject to meeting strict eligibility criteria.
Note: The author acknowledges that the source of information is https://www.gov.uk/ website. Additionally, the article contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
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