Hi,

About 13 years ago, we took out a Foundations Mortgage with Natwest (Thats an intrerest only cheque book type mortgage).

6 Years ago, when my business got into difficulties, I got behind on monthly interest payments, and (because my eye was not on that particular ball), went into default on the mortgage.

Since then, our payment history has been eratic due to customers not paying us. Natwest has on two occassions applied to the courts for repossession, and on each occassion I have managed to clear the arrears completely before the hearing. upon which Natwest applied for and was granted a stay with 'indefinite leave to restore'.

My questions for you caggers are:

a) Six years on, the mortgage remains 'In Default', there is nothing in the mortgage agreement that covers coming 'Out of Default', if i'm making my regular payments now, will NatWest EVER be forced to accept the mortgage is nolonger in default? Is there law that covers this?

b) 'Indefinate leave to restore' seems harsh (on the courts part) is there anything I can do about that?

c) During the 6 years, though we have never been to court (2 stayed hearings), Natwest I estimate have tagged on about £4000 of legal fees without detail or justification. I've asked them to provide that detail verbally, they have failed to do so. I'm going to ask them in writing, and if they still fail, demand they remove them altogether (under banking code of conduct), does anyone have experience of fighting these kind of charges?

Many thanks in advance for your help...

Hi, in a similar vein to my recent post on my Foundations Mortgage, about 6 years ago when my business got into difficulty, Natwest took out a CCJ against my wife on our joint 'Advantage Premier' account overdraft of about £9000.00. Shortly after they managed to get a charge for the CCJ against our house. Since then we get the occassional template letter from shoosmiths asking we start making payments, but have largely ignored.

However, whilst revisiting all our financial affars recently we decided to look at what kind of bank charges we had incurred on that account that could be challenged, and just going back six years before the default, we have a total of over £12,000!!

Now I understand that as a 'Claimant' bank charges are not easy to get back. BUT in this case I would like to use the charges as a DEFENSE and see if we can get the CCJ and Charging Order set aside, since the potentially unlawfull charges exceed the amount of the CCJ.

It's been just over 6 years since the CCJ (It's now dropped off CRA's), so it's really the charging order i'm targeting. Do you Caggers have an opinion on my likelyhood of success? or alternate paths to getting the charge on house set aside?

Many thanks in advance.

Bank charges unless you have a Hardship *(good one) would very hard to challenge after the Supreme court case couple of years ago, so at this point I would suggest you do not spend any monies yet as you would loose the money, but investigate and try to find any loop holes, I have been fighting HSBC since 2008 on that front and I have a Hardship case due to a major health incident and my hours was greatly reduced by employer, I still am fighting the issue , FOS well enough said about them the better they listen to lies by the Bank.

Sure others will also respond so see if anything else is raised.

Thanks for your input, but (and perhaps i've misunderstood this) I thought the supreme court ruling was that the charges were unlawful, which made it impossible for the bank to enforce action based on them, but didn't help people claim them back.

In my case i'm not trying to claim them back but to use them as a belated defence to the CCJ to obtain a set aside. Am I missing something?

Supreme Court decision

On 25 November 2009 the Supreme Court (formerly the House of Lords) handed down its judgment in the bank charges test case. The banks had appealed a Court of Appeal decision (made on

26 February 2009 – see below) that their unauthorised overdraft charging terms were subject to the test of fairness in the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contract Regulations (the Regulations).

What did the judgment say?

The Supreme Court has decided that the banks’ unauthorised overdraft charging terms are not fully assessable for fairness under the Regulations. This means that terms cannot be assessed on whether the banks are giving fair value for money.

What happens next?

The Supreme Court judgment effectively draws the test case process to an end. We now expect firms to deal with consumers’ complaints in line with the FSA’s complaint handling rules.

Will banks and building societies still charge customers unauthorised overdraft charges?

We expect so. However, the OFT has indicated that progress is being made to make personal current accounts work better for consumers and it will be monitoring developments over the next two years. More information is available on the OFT’s website.

bump

Morning,

I have come across your message regarding Natwest Foundations. My mother is also on this product and wondered if you have had managed to have any luck since your post here in 2013?