Small Claims Court Step-by-Step

Overview

The Small Claims Court is part of the County Court and handles claims up to £10,000 in England and Wales. It is designed to be accessible without a solicitor.

Before You Start

Is Court Right for You?

Have you exhausted the complaints process?

Is your claim within the limitation period (six years from the breach for most contract claims under section 5 of the Limitation Act 1980)?

Can you prove your case on the balance of probabilities?

Does the defendant have the means to pay?

Costs

Court fees scale with the value of the claim:

Claim up to £300: £35 court fee

£300.01 to £500: £50

£500.01 to £1,000: £70

£1,000.01 to £1,500: £80

£1,500.01 to £3,000: £115

£3,000.01 to £5,000: £205

£5,000.01 to £10,000: £455

A hearing fee is also payable, typically £80 to £346 depending on value, around three to four months before the hearing. If you cannot afford the fees, the Help with Fees scheme (form EX160) may reduce or waive them.

If you win, the court fees, hearing fee, and your witness expenses are recoverable from the defendant. If you lose, you absorb them. There are no recoverable solicitor costs on the small claims track beyond fixed amounts; this is the headline cost-risk difference from the fast track.

Step-by-Step Process

1. Send a Letter Before Action

Before court, you must send a formal LBA giving the defendant 14 days to respond. This is required by the Practice Direction on Pre-Action Conduct and Protocols. The LBA must identify the parties, set out the facts, state the legal basis, quantify the claim, and identify the deadline.

2. Issue Your Claim

File online at Money Claims Online (MCOL) or submit form N1. Get the defendant's correct legal name from Companies House for limited companies. Sole traders are sued in their own name.

3. Defendant Responds

They have 14 days to acknowledge service (extending to 28 days to file a defence) or 14 days to file a defence directly. They may:

Admit the claim (you win)

File a defence

Make a counter-claim

Ignore it (you can apply for default judgment)

4. Directions

The court sends a Directions Questionnaire (form N180 for small claims). Both sides provide information about the case. The court then issues directions that typically require exchange of witness statements and disclosure of documents.

5. Hearing

Usually informal, in a private hearing room

The judge asks questions and reviews evidence

No wigs, no gowns, no jury

Typically 30 minutes to an hour for small claims

6. Judgment

The judge makes a decision, usually on the day, sometimes reserved for a few weeks in writing.

Preparing Your Bundle

Your court bundle is the file the judge reads before the hearing. It is the document that decides the case. A small claims bundle should contain, in this order, with section dividers and continuous page numbering:

Section A: Court documents. Sealed claim form, defence, allocation questionnaire, court orders.

Section B: Witness statements. Yours and any supporting witnesses, each with a signed Statement of Truth.

Section C: Contract and payment. Order, invoice, payment receipt, agreed terms.

Section D: Photographs. Dated where possible. Three to twelve photographs is the right range.

Section E: Independent assessments. Expert opinions, second opinions, comparison quotes.

Section F: Pre-action correspondence. LBA, replies, chasers.

Section G: Without prejudice material. Part 36 offers, mediation correspondence.

Collate into a single paginated PDF with a clear table of contents. Print three copies: one for you, one for the judge, one for the defendant. Take them to the hearing in identical lever-arch files.

What this looks like in practice: a case from the EvenStance founder

I won a small claim earlier in 2026. The hearing was in a county court in the spring, against a specialist service business that had damaged a wheel on my car and refused to put it right. The replacement cost was around £1,700. I had been chasing the matter for ten months by the time we sat down in front of a District Judge. The case settled three days after the hearing on terms I was content with, via a Tomlin Order.

What decided the case was the bundle, not the hearing. The judge had read both bundles before either of us said a word, and the trajectory of the conversation made clear that he had already formed a view.

The defendant's bundle ran to nine documents. Seven of them were duplicates of my own documents: my Letter Before Action, my Reply to Defence, my Part 36 offer, my photographs, my WhatsApp transcript. The two genuinely new pieces of material were a narrative document called "Sequence of Events" (no Statement of Truth, so not a compliant witness statement) and three character references from satisfied previous customers (not the right form of evidence; the question at trial is what happened in my case, not whether the defendant is generally well-regarded).

My bundle ran to 141 pages. Two signed witness statements with Statements of Truth (mine and my wife's, who had been present at drop-off). A contemporaneous WhatsApp transcript with timestamps showing the defendant's own admissions on the day of the dispute. Dated photographs taken with EXIF data intact. Three independent expert assessments from specialist alloy refinishers, including one written email confirming the wheel could not be re-cut because there was not enough material remaining. An OEM replacement quotation from a main dealer. A clear chronological index that made each cross-reference traceable by section and page number.

The judge's posture changed about ten minutes in. He had been listening neutrally to both opening summaries. He then turned to the defendant and asked, in roughly these words: "Where is your evidence of what you say happened at the drop-off? Where are the notes from your own records?" The defendant did not have an answer. He said his account was in the Sequence of Events document. The judge said: "That is your narrative. Where is the contemporaneous record?"

That was the change. The judge had identified the central evidential weakness in the defendant's case and made it clear, in a courteous but pointed way, that he had identified it. From that point the hearing was about the defendant explaining the gap.

We settled three days later. The settlement was structured as a Tomlin Order under CPR 40: the court order recorded the stay of proceedings, the substantive terms sat in a confidential schedule between the parties. Tomlin Orders are commonly used when the parties want to fix the financial terms without putting them in a public judgment. They are enforceable as judgments for the money terms; if the defendant defaults, you can lift the stay.

What that tells you

The small claims track rewards documentary preparation more than oral advocacy. The hearing is short. The judge is decisive. The case is won or lost in the weeks before, not in the hour you are in the room.

Two principles generalise. First, contemporaneous evidence beats retrospective evidence almost every time. A timestamped WhatsApp transcript made on the day of the dispute is harder for the other side to displace than a narrative composed months later. The same applies to dated photographs (EXIF data is admissible), to original invoices, and to emails sent at the time of the events. Build your case around the contemporaneous record.

Second, the bundle is the case. Page numbers, section dividers, a table of contents, signed witness statements with Statements of Truth, an itemised schedule of loss. Defendants who arrive with character references and no contemporaneous documents lose the bundle comparison before the hearing starts. The judge has limited time to read; make every page work.

EvenStance Can Help

EvenStance helps you draft the Letter Before Action, structure the witness statement around the documents you actually have, build a bundle index in the format judges expect, and track every procedural deadline from issue through hearing. If your case is borderline, the platform will tell you so before you spend the £455 issue fee. The small claims flow is included in the standard tiers.