An allocation questionnaire is a form used in
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
legal practice
Legal practice is sometimes used to distinguish the body of judicial or administrative precedents, rules, policies, customs, and doctrines from legislative enactments such as statutes and constitutions which might be called "laws" in the strict ...
. After a claim is made, if a defence is filed each party is required to complete and return an allocation questionnaire to the court so that the judge may properly allocate the claim to a track and give further directions towards a final hearing.
Forms on the Internet
Sample allocation questionnaires are available on the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
. The official UK Courts web site has many forms available, including the allocation questionnaire. The actual form is available, as of March 2007, as a
pdf
Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...
file.
The
Citizens Advice Bureau
Citizens AdviceCitizens Advice is the operating name of The National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux which is the umbrella charity for a wider network of local advice centres. The abbreviation CitA is sometimes used to refer to this nation ...
provides a generic
legal advice
Legal advice is the giving of a professional or formal opinion regarding the substance or procedure of the law in relation to a particular factual situation. The provision of legal advice will often involve analyzing a set of facts and advising a ...
web site with information about the words and phrases used in small claims procedure in UK Courts.
The form itself
The allocation questionnaire is a Pivotal Point in the judicial process requesting the following information:
* Whether you wish to have a month to settle the case.
* What is the location or
venue
Venue is the location at which an event takes place. It may refer to:
Locations
* Venue (law), the place a case is heard
* Financial trading venue, a place or system where financial transactions can occur
* Music venue, place used for a concer ...
of the case, and why it is chosen.
* Whether any pre-action protocols applied, and whether these were complied with.
* What is the amount of the claim in dispute.
* Who you will call as lay or
expert witness
An expert witness, particularly in common law countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States, is a person whose opinion by virtue of education, training, certification, skills or experience, is accepted by the judge as ...
es.
* Whether the case should be considered small claims, or another track.
* How long you think the trial will take.
* How much your costs will be (in Pounds sterling).
Tracks
There are three tracks:
# Small claims - any claim up to £10,000 and certain
personal injury
Personal injury is a legal term for an injury to the body, mind or emotions, as opposed to an injury to property. In common law jurisdictions the term is most commonly used to refer to a type of tort lawsuit in which the person bringing the suit (t ...
and
tenant
Tenant may refer to:
Real estate
*Tenant, the holder of a leasehold estate in real estate
*Tenant-in-chief, in feudal land law
*Tenement (law), the holder of a legal interest in real estate
*Tenant farmer
*Anchor tenant, one of the larger stores ...
claims under £1,000.
# Fast track - disputes involving between £10,000 and £25,000.
# Multi-track - disputes that are claimed to be over £25,000, or in certain cases where the claim is for less than £25,000 but the complexity of the evidence and/or legal issues to be decided means the claim is better suited to the Multi-track, particularly where a claim will take more than 1 day to try. All Part 8 proceedings are allocated to the Multi-track.
The Woolf Report had recommended these changes in 1999 to the
Lord Chancellor
The lord chancellor, formally the lord high chancellor of Great Britain, is the highest-ranking traditional minister among the Great Officers of State in Scotland and England in the United Kingdom, nominally outranking the prime minister. The ...
.
Woolf Report online
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See also
*Interrogatories
In law, interrogatories (also known as requests for further information) are a formal set of written questions propounded by one litigant and required to be answered by an adversary in order to clarify matters of fact and help to determine in adv ...
*Unspecified claim
An unspecified claim is a tort claim "where the amount to be awarded is left to the Court to determine."
Examples of unspecified claims are unspecified damages for personal injuries, such as from a motor vehicle accident (MVA) or medical malprac ...
*Settlement conference A settlement or pre-trial conference is a meeting between opposing sides of a lawsuit at which the parties attempt to reach a mutually agreeable resolution of their dispute without having to proceed to a trial. Such a conference may be initiated thr ...
*Small claims court
Small-claims courts have limited jurisdiction to hear civil cases between private litigants. Courts authorized to try small claims may also have other judicial functions, and go by different names in different jurisdictions. For example, it may ...
References
Legal documents
Law of the United Kingdom
Civil procedure
Evidence law
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