Hi all, I have written a detailed particulars of claim and now wish to take the next step. I noticed that in the help guide for MCOL it states: "If you don't have space for all the details, provide a summary of your claim and say you will send the details separately. You will then have to send the detailed particulars to the defendant within 14 days of submitting the claim. You will also have to send the court a 'certificate of service' form. If your case is transferred to a local court, you will need to send a copy of the details to the court within seven days." I have the following questions about the above and I would be extremely grateful if anyone could help answer them: 1) Which court do I send the 'certificate of service' form to? Do I have to do this immediately? 2) On the 'certificate of service' form it asks for the name of the court and a claim number- where do I get these details from? 3) On the 'certificate of service' form it asks for "The date of service is" - what is this and where can I get this date from? 4) On the 'certificate of service' form it asks for the documents that I have served and requests to attach copies of these with the form. Does this mean that I should say I have sent my detailed POC, and then attach a copy of these? Does this include evidence e.g. invoices etc, or is this requested at a later date? 5) On the 'certificate of service' form it states: "Give the address where service effected, include fax or DX number, e-mail address or other electronic identification" - is this asking for the details of where I sent my detailed POC to ? 6) When I submit the claim, will a letter be sent to the defendant containing the details that I have entered in the MCOL i.e. will they be made aware that I am claiming against them? 7) Do I have to say in my detailed POC that the defendant has to defend themselves or will they get some kind of information pack explaining this etc? 8) How will I know if the defendant has responded within 14 days, and if the case is being transferred to the local court? Sorry for all the questions, this is my first claim and it is all very confusing Many thanks. regards Jonathan

Hi - I'm the claimant in a case detailed here - http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?266357-Pursuing-a-judgment-against-an-overseas-landlord-via-a-UK-letting-agent#post3016201 - it's a housing thing but because my latest headache is more about nuts n'bolts small claims procedure than the particulars of the claim I've posted it here, sorry if this is wrong. Anyway: I made a claim against an agent for various disrepair in a flat I rented once, they filed a defence, we applied to amend the claim form to add the landlord as a defendant and attended a direction hearing to get permission from a district judge to do this. The judge set a date for defence which the agent agreed to (themselves and on behalf of the LL who they represent), we filed the amended claim form with the court immediately afterwards and were basically advised to sit back and wait for further developments. After nobody filed a defence, I recently applied for default judgment but received a letter back asking for proof that we'd served the amended claim on the defendant, ie a certificate of service. My understanding based on what the court staff had told me was that because the agent was there and agreed to it, a date of service was specified in the order granted, and we'd paid £40 to amend the claim and hand it in to the court, the court would then serve the amended claim on the defendants along with appropriate pack of forms for defence etc. The court staff I recently spoke to on the phone basically said that we should have served it ourselves though, and that we now needed to do this. I'm a little uneasy about this becacse I've been bad advice by the court staff before that's delayed/complicated my case. I thought that the court serving the forms was kind of the default option because it's reliable and they can send the relevant additional forms from their end. Should I actually re-serve the papers myself, and if so should I be helpfully printing off various copies of the forms they need to fill in to respond to the claim? (This is partially based on me imagining that I've read a thread here where this happened to someone and they just had to write back saying "the court did this" - I can't find it if it exists)