What Does CCJ Mean?
CCJ stands for County Court Judgment.
It is a court order confirming that a debt is legally owed, usually obtained by a creditor who has not been paid. CCJs can be registered against a company or against an individual, and both are visible to lenders.
A judgment stays on the Register of Judgments, Orders and Fines for six years. If it is paid in full within one month of the judgment date it can be removed entirely; paid after that, it stays on the register but is marked as satisfied.
How Lenders Treat A CCJ
A CCJ is a meaningful negative marker, but it is not automatically fatal to a business finance application. What lenders assess:
- Satisfied or unsatisfied — a paid CCJ is a far easier case than an outstanding one
- Age — judgments over three years old carry noticeably less weight
- Value — a small judgment from a supplier dispute reads very differently from a large one
- Cause — a genuine commercial dispute you can document is not the same as simple non-payment
- Pattern — one judgment is an incident, several are a habit
High street banks tend to decline on any CCJ as a matter of policy. Specialist and fintech lenders assess the underlying trading position and will often lend, priced for the additional risk.
Disclose It Rather Than Hope
Lenders run the searches and will find a judgment regardless. A CCJ declared at the outset, with a short factual explanation, is a manageable fact. The same judgment discovered after an offer has been issued usually ends the deal — because at that point there is a credibility problem as well as a credit problem.
If the judgment is against you personally rather than the company, secured routes such as asset finance and invoice finance become the more realistic options, since the lender’s protection comes from the security rather than from your credit history.
Read more about business loans for bad credit, including how CCJs, defaults and poor personal credit are assessed — or speak to us about your situation.
« Back to Glossary Index