Claim Production Centre

The County Court Business Centre (CCBC) is a centre of the County Court of England and Wales created to deal with claims by the use of various electronic media. Unlike other County Court centres the CCBC does not physically hear cases. If any case might require a hearing it is transferred to another centre.

The increasing ubiquity of computers and Internet access led to public discussion of allowing greater use of information technology to run court proceedings.

In January 1990 the Claim Production Centre (CPC) (originally called the Summons Production Centre) was created, with the power to issue and serve claims through information technology. This is currently enshrined within Rule 7.10 of the Civil Procedure Rules 1998 (CPR). This states that "…there shall be a Production Centre for the issue of claim forms and other related matters…" and that the relevant practice direction makes provision for its use and any modification or disapplication of the CPR.

All claims issued through the CPC were originally issued in the name of a county court in the same way as claims issued in the traditional manner. In March 1992 the CCBC was created to remove the burden of routine matters in simple CPC cases from the other county court. The current definition of such matters is contained in Practice Direction 7C.

Currently both the CPC and CCBC are located in Northampton.

Use of the CCBC is available only to members. Membership is free and is available to anyone who successfully demonstrates they can meet the IT requirements of the CCBC.

Continued use of the CCBC is subject to the Rules of Membership and Code of Conduct.

Cases can be issued through the CCBC in two different ways.

Money Claim Online (MCOL) was created in February 2002. It provides users who wish to issue a limited number of claims to commence and manage County Court proceedings using a website, and to pay court fees online using a credit card.

Instead of submitting an individual claim form along with an individual payment of the correct fee for each case, CCBC users submit a single file containing each of the claims they wish to issue on a particular day as a data record in a specified format. Fees for all of these cases can be paid in a lump sum.

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