Help needed with procedure and small claims court

Other

We have 3 student tenants who signed an AST jointly and severally for 12 months on the 15th of June 2007, and since then, one left (tenant no.1) but did continue to pay her rent for a while. The other two paid regularly right up until March this year.

We have a LA who collects the rent on our behalf, but he has been a bit slack (to say the least) in informing us that the tenant no.1 ceased to pay their share about the same time. There was a dispute between the LA and the tenants where the tenants insisted that they had paid at least one month more (the March- April period) but were not given a receipt.

Since then, they have actually admitted finally that they were trying it on, meanwhile the LA issued a warning of proceedings and one tenant did make efforts to catch up on their 'share' but are still in arrears. Collectively, they owe £2,700 with tenant no.1 ignoring all letters and requests for payment.

They are due to leave this Sunday, and hopefully they will so we can then issue small claims court proceedings against them.

Sorry for the longwinded explanation, but I thought it best to give a bit of background info.

My question is this; do we serve notice of s.claims to all the tenants separately? and at the same time?

Do we claim the total unpaid rent (£2,700)from each tenant? or just each tenants share (bearing in mind they did sign jointly and severally)as they have been paying separately throughout the tenancy in cash to the LA.

Will we have to give each tenant separately copies of all the relevant documents?

Do we have to pay for 3 separate sets of court papers?

Do we in fact take all three separately to the small claims court?

Any info and advice would be most gratefully received as we have never had to do this before.