Northampton Bulk Centre
The purpose of the Bulk Centre is to provide an excellent service designed around the diverse needs of our customers. We utilise modern, streamlined systems to facilitate the removal of repetitive staff-intensive work from local courts to a central, computer-supported office in Northampton. There are about 200 staff dealing with the work at the Bulk Centre, which is made up of:
Claim Production Centre (CPC)
- which issues over half of all county court 'specified amount' claims. There are around 150 users and we receive data files electronically each day. After processing, the case data is sent electronically to the court(s) selected by the claimant.
County Court Bulk Centre (CCBC)
- which, under the name of Northampton County Court, deals with 9 out of 10 CPC cases. Around 200 defences are received each day both through the post and online. Where a claim is defended it is then transferred to the appropriate local county court. Judgment requests and requests to issue warrants of execution are also received electronically. CCBC receives on average 100 requests for Certificates of Cancellation and Satisfaction each day.
Money Claim Online (MCOL)
Money Claim Online - which enables a claimant to request issue of a claim online via the Internet. This service is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and provides lower volume customers with the choice of issuing their claims electronically at a time that suits them rather than manually completing forms to be issued during normal court working hours.
Traffic Enforcement Centre (TEC)
- which acts as a registration point for local authorities which have de-criminalised on-street parking and vehicle emission charges and, for the London boroughs, registration of bus lane encroachment and congestion charging penalties.
Centralised Attachment of earnings Payment System (CAPS)
- which monitors and processes payments on all single attachment of earnings orders. There are currently over 60,000 live orders on the system. On average, CAPS receives 11,000 payments a week and all payments are processed on the date of receipt so that maintenance payments can be forwarded on the following business day.
Please note that a new digital telephone system has been installed at this office. Incoming and outgoing calls may be recorded for training and quality control purposes.
Please note that Her Majesty's Court Service does not accept that its staff are required to tolerate abuse from customers.
Following the High Court hearing on 22 May in relation to the stay put on all bank charge claims issued, banks have been given leave to appeal.
Pending the final outcome of this matter, the management of individual cases in the county courts is a matter for county court judges to consider based upon the circumstances of each individual case. However, at yesterday's hearing, Mr Justice Andrew Smith confirmed that the reasons behind the original stay on such proceedings continue to apply at least until the disposal of the appeal.
If a customer decides to make a claim in a court or through Money Claims Online it will be issued in the usual way, but may then be stayed under arrangements put in place by the local judiciary.