The judgment came through weeks ago. You won — and still no money has moved, so now there is another form: N323, the request for a warrant of control, carrying a court fee of £96 that has applied since 13 July 2026 and is added to what you’re already owed.
That is the part nobody warns you about. Winning is not being paid. A judgment is a court’s written finding that the money is yours; it is not the money. It sits in a drawer, entirely correct, entirely unspent. Across town, the other side has read the same order and decided to do nothing, and the law’s answer to that is not thunder. It is a two-page request and a receipt.
A warrant of control sends the County Court’s own enforcement agents to the debtor’s address to collect what you’re owed, or to take goods to that value and sell them. You can use it for County Court judgments up to £5,000. If you’re owed £10 or less, you can’t ask for one — too small to trouble the machinery. If you’re owed between £600 and £5,000 you have a choice: keep it in the County Court, or send it up to the High Court as a writ of control on form N293A, where different enforcement officers do broadly the same work. Above £5,000 the choice is made for you; it must go to the High Court.
There’s a small, telling detail in the history. Until 6 April 2014 this was called a warrant of execution. Then the whole regime was rewritten, and someone evidently decided execution sounded too final, so the paperwork now says control. The form was renamed. The van was not.
Here is the rhythm of it. Once the warrant issues, the enforcement agent must give the debtor at least seven clear days’ notice before taking control of any goods — a statutory pause, Sundays and bank holidays not counted. Seven days is enough time to find the money. It is also enough time to move the television to a relative’s. The notice is the law being scrupulously fair to the person who already ignored a court order, and you are expected to admire the symmetry.
The warrant lasts a year. If the year runs out with the debt unpaid you don’t get the time back; you apply to extend it on form N244, or you begin again. The clock does not care that you were waiting.
None of this needs a solicitor, and you should know that before you pay for one. GOV.UK sets out the enforcement options in plain terms; Citizens Advice and National Debtline will talk you through them at no cost. If you don’t even know whether the debtor has anything worth taking, you can ask the court to summon them to answer questions about their income and what they own, under a separate procedure, before you commit to enforcement at all. Free first. Always.
The trouble with N323 was never that it’s hard to follow line by line. It’s that you have to be precise on a day you are anything but. The claim number. The judgment date. The exact sum still outstanding after whatever part-payments dribbled in. The right enforcement address. Get one figure wrong and the request comes back, and the debt sits there a fortnight longer — entirely correct, entirely unspent.
This is where Chris is useful. Chris takes the judgment you already hold and the details of who owes what, asks the questions the form asks in the order it asks them, and produces your completed request to enforce the judgment: the sum reconciled, the boxes filled, the thing ready to go to the court. Not advice on whether to. The document that does it, checked and in your hands.
You won already. This is only the part where the paper catches up with the fact.
Come back when they’ve paid — or when they still haven’t.