The form is called N180, and the only part that matters this week is the date typed on the covering letter. Miss it and the case can stall — after you paid to issue it, after you waited, after the other side finally filed a defence. This is the directions questionnaire, and despite the name it does something plain: it decides how your small claim is actually heard.
It lands once your claim is defended. The court sends the same questionnaire to both sides, on the assumption that neither of you has a solicitor filling it in. What looks like a form is a row of forks in the road. Each box you tick nudges the case one way rather than another.
Start with the trap at the top. The N180 asks you to note the date it must be returned by, and the court to return it to — which, in the form’s words, “may be different from the court where the proceedings were issued.” Read that twice. The building that issued your claim and the building you post the questionnaire back to are not always the same. Send it to the wrong tray and your deadline keeps running while it sits there.
Then Section A: settlement and mediation. For any money claim of £10,000 or less the form is blunt — “parties are required to attend a mediation appointment organised by the Small Claims Mediation Service.” It is free, run by HMCTS, usually a single one-hour telephone call. Skip it and you “may be subject to penalties”: costs, or the judge ruling in the other side’s favour for non-attendance. (Personal injury and road traffic claims sit outside this — leave that part blank if that is your case.) Mediation is not surrender. An hour on the phone that ends the dispute is an hour that spares you the hearing.
The rest of the questionnaire is where you quietly set the terms of your own trial. Section C asks whether you agree the small claims track — lower-value, less complex claims under £10,000 — is the right one. Section D asks whether it could be decided on the papers, with no hearing at all, a judge reading the file and giving reasons. Section E pins down the mediation practicalities: who will attend, the dates you cannot make in the next three months, whether you need an interpreter or other support. Section F is the hearing itself — which County Court hearing centre you would prefer and why, whether you want permission to rely on an expert’s written evidence, and how many witnesses, including yourself, will give evidence for you.
None of it is hard. All of it is easy to get slightly wrong under a deadline, and slightly wrong is enough. Leave the venue blank and you may travel further than you need to. Forget to list the week you are away and your one free mediation slot can land squarely inside it.
Before any of that, the free routes are worth naming. Citizens Advice can walk you through what the small claims track involves. GOV.UK carries leaflet EX306, “The small claims track in civil courts,” written for exactly the person holding this form. And if the dispute is with an energy supplier, a trader or a landlord, an ombudsman may resolve it with no hearing at all. Try those first. The questionnaire will still be there.
But when you do sit down to fill it in — to turn “how many witnesses” and “why this hearing centre” and “are you asking for an expert” into answers that read as though you knew what you were doing — that is where people freeze. Tell Chris what the claim is about and what happened, and Chris takes you through the N180 section by section, in your own words, until what you are looking at is the finished directions questionnaire: dated, addressed to the right court, ready to go back.
The form decides how your case is heard. You should be the one who fills it in. Our Form N180 guide (section by section) goes through every box.
Come back when the next form lands — there is a guide for that one too.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
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