James Barnett and his partner were preparing to buy their first property together. On the advice of their mortgage broker, Barnett checked his credit record before applying for a loan. That’s when he discovered a county court judgment (CCJ) had been filed against him for a debt he knew nothing about.
“The case concerned an unpaid Thames Water bill for an address I had never lived at,” he says. “This catastrophic mistake has wrecked my credit score, cost me the property purchase I have been saving my whole adult life for, and left me financially paralysed.”
