Claire Sandbrook
LLB (Hons) · Solicitor · Authorised High Court Enforcement Officer
· Founder & CEO, Shergroup
Now in her fifth decade in the profession — a career that began in the London Sheriff’s Office in 1980 — Claire is a Solicitor, one of a limited number of Authorised High Court Enforcement Officers in England and Wales, and one of very few women ever to hold that office.
– MEET THE CEO
Five Decades of Making Things Happen
Claire is the founder and Chief Executive of Shergroup, the business-solutions group that grew from the long-established London and Surrey law firm of Burchell & Ruston and the Office of Sheriff. Now in her fifth decade in the profession — a career that began in the London Sheriff’s Office in 1980 — Claire is a Solicitor and one of a limited number of Authorised High Court Enforcement Officers in England and Wales, and one of very few women ever to hold that office. She is the first woman appointed Under Sheriff of Surrey, a published and internationally cited author on enforcement, a familiar face from British television, and is listed in Marquis Who’s Who in America.
– EARLY CAREER
From Audio Typist to Equity Partner
Claire’s story is one of humble beginnings. She left her home city of Norwich at eighteen and, in 1980, took her first job — as an audio typist at Burchell & Ruston in London. Within three years she had set her sights higher, putting herself through her law degree and Law Society examinations. She was offered an articled clerkship, qualified as a solicitor, and was made a partner.
In 1992 she took an equity stake in the firm and designed a “Way Forward” strategy to diversify it beyond its reliance on the Office of Sheriff — an early lesson, she says, that no business should ever depend on a single source of revenue. It is a principle that has shaped every decade since.
– THE SHERIFF
A Pioneering Sheriff
In 1998 Claire was appointed Under Sheriff of Surrey — the first woman ever to hold the historic role — serving under the High Sheriff, the much-loved Sir Richard Stilgoe. She also served as Deputy Sheriff of Greater London, and for years managed the ceremonial court opening at Guildford Crown Court before Her Majesty’s Judges, the High Sheriff and the Bishop of Guildford. When the ancient office was reformed and the modern role of High Court Enforcement Officer was created in 2004, Claire was among the first to be authorised.
– INDUSTRY LEADERSHIP
Reforming Civil Enforcement
As Government moved to reform the Shrievalty, Claire became one of the profession’s most determined advocates. She founded the Sheriffs Lodgment Centre in 1998 and led the National Sheriffs Campaign, winning the support of senior judges — Lord Woolf, then the most senior judge in England and Wales, visited her office to see the transfer of county court judgments to the High Court for himself. Between 1998 and 2004 the Centre transferred nearly 500,000 judgments.
Appointed to the Lord Chancellor’s Advisory Group on Enforcement Service Delivery, Claire helped shape the 2003 White Paper Effective Enforcement, and proposed the online DVLA-search facility that — built with £38,000 of departmental funding — became Shergroup’s Shercar system, still used within HM Courts & Tribunals Service’s SHERPA portal today.
She later served on the Ministry of Justice working party implementing the Taking Control of Goods Regulations, and helped open High Court enforcement to Employment Tribunal and ACAS awards.
– CIVIL ENFORCEMENT
Chair of the HCEOA and the Education Pathway
In 2008 Claire was appointed Chair of the High Court Enforcement Officers Association. In that role she established the profession’s Education Pathway — drawing on her position as Vice-Chair of the Chartered Institute of Credit Management to give it institutional backing — and led the Association’s influential response on enforcement fees, work that informed the fee scales in the Taking Control of Goods (Fees) Regulations 2014.
She represented the Association internationally at the Union Internationale des Huissiers de Justice in Paris, Marseilles and Romania.
– PUBLISHED WORKS
Author and Cited Authority
Claire has contributed to the leading texts in her field for three decades. Beginning in 1995 with The Execution of Sheriffs’ Warrants, she went on to write the Sheriffs and Interpleader titles in Halsbury’s Laws of England, co-authored the ninth edition of the leading practitioner work Enforcement of a Judgment before taking over the commission in her own name for its tenth and eleventh editions, and authored Debt Recovery Through the Courts.
Her work is cited in international comparative-law scholarship — including C.H. van Rhee’s Enforcement and Enforceability: Tradition and Reform, Diana Alina Onțanu’s Cross-Border Debt Recovery in the EU, the Romanian Journal of Comparative Law, and a Russian comparative civil-procedure textbook used in teaching at Moscow State University and St Petersburg State University.
KEY PUBLICATIONS
The Execution of Sheriffs’ Warrants – 1995
Halsbury’s Laws of England — Sheriffs & Interpleader – Two Volumes
Enforcement of Judgment – 9th, 10th & 11th editions · Sweet & Maxwell
Debt Recovery Through the Courts – 1st edition · Sweet & Maxwell
– THE BUSINESS
Building Shergroup — and Taking It Transatlantic
In 2004 Claire and her fellow Authorised High Court Enforcement Officers launched Sherforce and Sherbond to carry the work of the Sheriffs across the whole of England and Wales — winning National Plain English Awards for explaining that work in plain terms. She extended operations to India, built Shergroup’s secure cloud-based SHERPA platform, and pioneered remote working for her teams long before it was commonplace.
In 2011 she moved her family to Orlando, Florida to grow the business in the United States, where she now leads Shergroup Global Consulting. Claire was the Authorised High Court Enforcement Officer featured on Channel 5’s Can’t Pay? We’ll Take It Away!, having previously created The Enforcers, and most recently Call the Bailiffs: Time to Pay Up — her third television project.
– RECOGNITION
Recognition and Honours
Claire was named the Institute of Credit Management’s Credit Personality of the Year in 2010, was a finalist in the First Women Awards and the East of England Business Woman of the Year Awards, and her charity, the Sherbet Foundation, was shortlisted for a Credit Today Corporate Social Responsibility Award. She is listed in Marquis Who’s Who in America, and has been granted United States permanent residency in recognition of her extraordinary ability in her field.
– COMMUNITY
Human to Human
A committed networker, Claire serves as President of her BNI chapter, County Line Connections, in Central Florida — a role she also held in 2022 — championing her belief that business, at its heart, is “human to human.”
– PERSONAL
Life Beyond Business
Claire has been married to Steve since 1986, with the couple celebrating their fortieth wedding anniversary in 2026. They have two children, Alice and Harry, a son-in-law, Nima, and a grandson, Cyrus.
A proud Norwich native, Claire is an enthusiast for digital innovation, world travel, interior design — and, she happily admits, all things Disney.
