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Anon at 14:15 - perhaps consider your scenarios from a non-claimant's solicitor perspective.

I regularly deal with fast track claims where we are making settlement offers early on and try to agree defence extensions to facilitate early settlement before incurring significant costs.

After months and months of non-progressive silence pre-action, Claimant's solicitors then refuse defence extensions and draw out their responses to Part 36 offers as long as possible leaving the Defendant forced to file a defence, raising nothing more than the Claimant's solicitors already knew pre-action.

Chaser letters and telephone calls seeking discussion are ignored. Settlement is then achieved - surprise, surprise - post-allocation for a nominal sum above the the original offer. So the Defendant has spent considerable cost they cannot recover, the Claimant gets very little more (which they would most likely have had months before, had their solicitors not tactically refused to have a sensible discussion), and the Claimant's solicitor gets their fixed costs to the pre-Trial stage because the Court has listed a Trial date with case management directions,.

Take a guess at who the big winner is there??

It's high time that Claimant's solicitors and their underhanded profiteering tactics were dealt with, and if this is the way to do it, then so be it.