Court Claim and Response Pack Received - advice needed re paperwork

[SkiGal]

I received court paper work this weekend in respect of a MCOL application made by my "ex" builders, debt collector's solicitor. The issue date is 29 April 2020 and the amount claimed is just over £1.5k + interest, listing fee and costs. All told just under £1.8k.

It is a matter that I am aware of and the sum involved represents the balance of our offer to settle (made in June 2019). I do have a significant counterclaim to make but it will be under £10k.

I can post more details of the case in due course as I may need help structuring my defence and counterclaim particulars but for now I need some advice regarding the completion of the court paperwork and was wondering if you can help?

I am aware that the acknowledgement of service, defence and counterclaim can be submitted online but it does look like there is limited space to state the defence and counterclaim particulars. Does anyone know whether you can submit an acknowledgement of service online and add additional pages to the defence and counterclaim particulars as you can for the paper form? If this is not possible, can you submit the acknowledgement of service online and send the defence and counterclaim on paper i.e. mix and match, or would I have to submit everything on paper?

The reason for needing more space is that my defence and counterclaim particulars are quite complex but I do need to fully outline them at this stage so that they can be expanded upon at the hearing in due course.

If submitting documents on paper do they need to be sent to the Northampton address and should I use recorded mail with insurance for consequential loss just in case they don’t arrive on time? I am not planning on leaving it until the last minute to post them but in the current situation post may be unavoidably delayed.

Finally, when submitting the defence and counterclaim, do I need to send a copy to the Claimants solicitors or should I leave this to the Courts to do in due course?

Any help and advice that can be given in this regard would be very much appreciated so I thank you in advance for reading this post and for your time and expertise if you do reply.

[ostell]

You acknowledge the claim online using the details and password on the form. If you do this at least 5 days after issue date this gives you 33 days from date of issue to get your defence to the court.

Your defence etc can be submitted as an PDF attachment to an email so that you can format it correctly and the formatting will not be lost.

The defence is copied by the court and sent to the claimant, but after that it is a copy to the court and a copy to the claimant.

[SkiGal]

Ostell, thank you so much for replying. Can I just ask how you submit the defence by email, do you send the pdf attachment to the ccbc@justice.gov.uk email address? Can you email the counterclaim as well? Do you still fill in the defence and counterclaim form and email that as well or complete it online with a note in the particulars boxes to say the details have been emailed? If you do email the details do you get an acknowledgement of receipt? Apologies if these are daft questions but it is a steep learning curve!