County Court delay

[tesla6518]

I would appreciate the next step approach to the following problem:

A Claim was submitted to the court and the fee paid,.
A notice of issue was received giving the issue date as 10/08/2023
The defendants were given until 15/09/2023 to respond, 7 days after this date the court were contacted, who informed that of the 12 defendants only 1 had sent an acknowledgement. therefore giving a further 28 days to submit a defence (the defendants are not represented therefore the 1 for all defence does not apply). 7days after the expiry however they explained that they were operating with 3/4 week delay. the court were contacted again after 4 weeks and they were surprised that the defence had not been sent out, this was promise to be passed to the judge and sent within 7 days.
This date was also not met and another telephone call was made, this time it was explained that the file had been mislaid but would be sorted within 7 days. Also this also did not result in the receiving of the defence. an email was sent to the court manager asking for an explanation and when the papers would be received but to date some 2 weeks later there has been no response. 14 weeks have passed since the issue of the claim. any advice on how to proceed would be appreciated

[tesla6518]

The court eventually sent copies in December, however as pointed out by Atticus the defendants failed to serve copies of the defence as per CPR;s

[Pezza54]

With 12 defendants on paper (not as quick as MCOL) the time the court process is taking does not surprise me.
In my case there was only one defendant (not MCOL),, and it has been about 11 months since I filed form N1
I still don't have a court date yet nor a court direction to file outstanding evidence etc

[tesla6518]

Hi Pezza54 This not a money claim so could not go that route anyway, An order for an hearing was received from the court prior to receiving the defence and the first thing on the order was "Defence" which was rather unusual, I would have expected items to deal with the case management, However on receipt of the defences it all became clear. Each defence was identical and was mere rambling, suggesting evidence and then stating that the evidence was not available, objecting to the courts jurisdiction (no application made within 14 days) and defence submitted (accepting courts jurisdiction to deal with case). Of course shall be asking for the defence to be struck out and summary judgement. I am also looking at "Contempt of Court" as two of the defendants have signed the defence "oath of Truthfulness" but were not present at the meeting that this matter is centred on. We tried several ways to get a list of those present during PAP, bur all (and I mean All ) communications were ignored.
so now we await the hearing