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But why would I issue a chancery claim in Liverpool, when I know that come PTR time the choice will be between a recorder sitting in Manchester, one of Liverpools Chancery circuit judges, also sitting mostly in Manchester, and so busy that they won't have time, or one of the three Chancery DJs who now take on any case it is possible for them to take, due to the lack of judicial resources.

At least they will keep chancery claims in Liverpool. Issue one in Preston, and the odds on chances are they'll transfer it to Manchester anyway.

Either way, you will wait month after month for a hearing, there's an odds on chance that they'll lose the file, and even though its marked as a chancery matter, it will end up getting case managed by a Deputy District Judge whose day job is doing divorces and family work (and who is probably not good at that).

In my experience, if your case can justify it, and so long as you avoid the appalling black hold that is Central London County Court (or should I say the County Court sitting at the Central London Hearing Centre) then its RCJ every time for High Court cases.

Reasonable adminsitration. Quick listing. Court staff you can actually telephone if the need arises.

And yes, if / when it comes to costs assessment, you know you aren't taking the lottery of the aforsaid DDJ doing the detailed assessment. One day you may get a costs judge out in the sticks who will say "oh this looks awfully complicated, I don't really understand it so I'll allow everything as claimed"; the next day you get "Well DomCoop, I know you've had to read through and analyse hundreds of pages of disclosure, but your case settled, so you should've foreseen the future and not bothered doing any work on disclosure because of the eventual settlement. I'm going to disallow all your time".

People vote with their feet - what use is it to say "oh well if you start issuing locally we'll review it"? If they put the resource in, people would issue locally!