Understood and thank you for clarifying.
I must have misremembered your previous advise as I thought this would never go to court.
I just re-read the posts and in your reply #5 from December 09, 2024, 04:13:15 pm where you said "Eventually the case will be allocated to your local county court and you'll receive a date for a hearing if the claim hasn't already been struck out. The claimant has to pay the £27 trial fee around a month before the hearing. They will discontinue before having to pay that fee. If they don't and you are the only one out of thousands I will have seen that has to go all the way to a hearing, you'd have to make your Witness Statement and send it to the court no later than (usually) 14 days before the hearing."
This was always going to be allocated and it's all as you've previously explained.