Ministry of Justice response to FoI request

In response to my request under the Freedom of Information Act to the Ministry of Justice for the number of claims issued by the two firms of solicitors since I informed HFC that the collection charges were unlawful, in 2003, they provided the following information. The number of claims issued was  91,689. With an average collection charge of £1,500 this means that approximately £137,000,000 in unlawful charges was added to accounts. This doesn’t included cases where proceedings were not issued but where collection charges were added, probably a similar number.

Year 2002 / 2003 2003 / 2004 2004 / 2005 2005 / 2006 2006 / 2007 2007 / 2008 2008 / 2009 2009 / 2010
Claims issued by Restons 2733 3369 3460 5761 9004 6757 6511 8992
Claims issued by 2362 1137 2307 1646 2981 2373 17475 14821