I've decided to post this in the Homelessness section, despite there being several issues at once and I need your advice, but mods, feel free to move this to a different section if necessary. My situation: - Just about to become 50 - Have lived in a terrible and dodgy guest house for 2.5 years. It wasn't dodgy and terrible when I went there - When I went there I had a job and a single room. Now I've been on the dole for some time (on and off) and I am forced to share a room with other people. - New people and new staff have come through the years and they have brought... how can I say.. dirtbags! Dodgy and abusive gits, people with a hefty criminal record, etc. - The owners are the same but have given up on patrolling the place. They only come every now and again. - Over the months I've been verbally abused by both staff and guests, mainly because I'm not in their circle of booze and drugs and what have you. This afternoon I was threatened by a fellow guest for petty reasons. I managed to speak to the owners. One of them says he'll do what he can but I can't trust him anymore. - I'm struggle to find a job and leaving the place immediately is not an option. Virtually no landlord would rent to a 50yo unemployed, at least not in my area. So, in other owrds, I'm stuck here. - Part of the staff (the dodgy ones) hate me and they told me straight in my face that they'll do what they can to convince the landlords to kick me out (I have no formal rental contract. I pay month to month) and I think they are very close to their goal. So my questions are: 1) In the immediate what can I do? I was thinking of calling the police but what can they do? And the landlords have already hinted that if I call the police, my future at the place is at stake. 2) If they do kick me out, can I receive help as homeless? I'm on benefits, but I have some savings (under £6k). Please I beg you not to think I'm just an intentional bum. I was in IT circa 10-15 years ago but my career is finished and I have nowhere to go. Thanks for reading.

I have received a letter today from Latern (formerly Motor Mile Finance) about some old short term loans from around 2012. This really is out of the blue, I've heard nothing from them for as long as I can recall and this letter was actually sent to my previous address but was re-directed. It is quite a jovial letter, it reads "So, dust off the BBQ, enjoy the sun and take this opportunity to clear your debts before winter approaches". They're offering up to 60% reduction. This is a summary of the debts: Quick Quid £512 - Last payment date: not shown Northway £838.88 - Last payment date: not shown Think Finance (UK) Ltd t/a 1 MONTH LOAN: £350 - Last payment date 19/06/2012 At least one of the debts (probably all) are 6 years since last payment / taking out the credit so are possible statute barred. None of these debts appear on any of my credit records (Experian / Equifax / Noddle / MSE credit club) 1. What is the best approach with these to avoid acknowledging but ensuring it doesn't escalate to CCJ for example? 2. The address on the letter is my previous address (moved 1 month ago) and the debts relate to an address before that one. Should I do anything about this? I have a postal redirect in place for next 6 months but don't want a door knock at old address because the new tenants know me and my new address. Note that since these bad days of pay day loans in 2012, I have taken responsibility for my finances. I'm a long time YNAB user and have my finances under microscopic control. I have no CCJ's but I do have a some defaults from 3 years ago that are now either satisfied or in a steady arrangement. I'm on the way to cleaning myself up so I don't want to make an error and set myself back. Any advice is welcome.

A few days ago I completed a few transaction over LocalBitcoins.com to a buyer named Muumbis (currently blocked) who seemed to be a trusted user, had good feedback and 2 months of multiple transactions. The buyer sent me the funds through a PayPal transfer, and then I proceeded to send/release the bitcoins to his account once the money hit my account. These transactions were very profitable to me, amounting to about 40% of profit over the then exchange price of bitcoin. Only after 6 PayPal transactions amounting to a total of around £11000, I noticed that the person’s details included in the PayPal account used to forward all these payments differed greatly from the personal information of this LocalBitcoins.com user. For comparison sake, the owner of the PayPal account is a Canadian, while this person seems to be based in Netherlands (Proxy, likely) and has a verified phone number from Kenya, as well as, beginning of a different gender. As of now PayPal as yet to contact me about any irregularities in these transactions and I made sure I transferred all my PayPal balance to my savings account. However I’m confident I got [problem]med and it’s just a matter of time until these payments are flagged as unauthorized transactions and the owner of the PayPal account files a chargeback against me leaving me empty of bitcoins and about 5000£ of negative PayPal balance, which I have no means to payback as I’m student and I already have some debt going. Summary, I sold some bitcoins at 40-50% in profit to a guy who used a hijacked PayPal account to pay me. It’s just a matter of time until the victim of the hijacked account files a PayPal unauthorised transaction/ chargeback against me. PayPal then reverses the transaction and the [problem]mer gets the bitcoins while I’m left to pay around 5000£ of debt due to the profit margin. I’m divested by this, as I’m a victim too just like the affect PayPal account owner, plus I have no means to payback if these transactions are found to be unauthorized. Perhaps, in the end, all I could do is payback the some of the money to the victim excluding the profit/debt margin that was employed in this [problem]. God, I can’t believe a fell for it, I’m aware of this sort of thing yet due to my own stupidity or being a student with no income I just went for it….Never felt so dumb. I know I’m making assumptions on what if…however, I just need to a little guidance on what to do next or who to turn to, basically a course of action to reduce all the possible damage. Thank you all

I think my landlord or someone else may have entered my property without my permission and this has made me feel very uncomfortable. Obviously at this present time it's just a suspicion. I think this because I have a coin meter for my electric, it doesn't seem to read the amount of coins entered well but it says not to exceed 80 coins. I have been in this property over 7 months and at a guess I have probably put in 150-200 coins and it doesn't sound anywhere near full, leading me to think someone might have let themselves in without my permission to empty it and I don't know how many times they have done this if it is the case. I have emailed my Landlord to ask what the procedure is with the meter and that it's never been emptied since I have been here (to my knowledge) It will be interesting to see his response. What also concerned me a little was on Monday I heard 2 people talking and they were knocking on the door of the flat that's right next to me and the lady wasn't in, they let themselves in, after that they knocked on my door and I said just a minute as I had just got out of the shower and they said oh sorry wrong door, I found this very odd too. If people acting on behalf of the Landlord or my Landlord have been in here without my prior consent and without giving the required 24 hours notice, I feel it would make it untenable for me to stay here as not only is it a breach of tenancy but I would feel it's a breach of trust and a lack of respect, nevermind not obeying the rules of the tenancy. Thanks for reading.

Hi and thank you for taking the time to read my post, I believe I may have an issue with my Landlord supplied electricity. I am posting here in the hope that you kind folk may give me advice on my maths, assumptions and possible action, The situation: I live in a building that is subdivided into 9 self-contained flats. The Landlord is responsible for paying the electricity bill for the whole building, there is a regular usage meter on the outside that records the usage for the whole building. The Landlord has installed payment meters into each flat, in order to credit these meters we have to purchase £5 disposable cards from the Landlord which are inserted into the meter to credit it. The rates: The meters are currently set to charge 55p for every kWh of electricity used. I do not know what supplier, per unit price or standing charge the Landlord is paying as I have not yet confronted him about this as I would like to make sure I've not made any mistakes or overlooked something. The problem: I believe I am paying over double the price I should based on my usage. I have kept a tally on the amount of cards I have bought over a 3 month period and I have spent £265 on electricity cards. This works out to a usage of about 482 kWh per quarter. If I were getting my electricity directly from a supplier, say British Gas for example, using their Standard Tariff information on their website it quotes 12.28p per kWh with a standing charge of 26.01p per day. A quarter is 91.25 days on average so that's a standing charge of £23.73 per quarter and £59.19 of usage making a total of £82.92 with VAT that comes to £99.50. I figure this means I'm paying roughly 250% more for my electricity than if I were getting it direct. The concessions: Many of the tenants of this building are quite old. They do not use modern devices like computers and the like and I imagine have quite low electricity usage. This being the case, the Landlord would have to increase the price per unit in order to cover the standing charge he is paying. But seeing as I don't actually have the information regarding the other tenants and the Landlord's billing I am only speculating here. In any case this arrangement would be very unfair on a higher user like myself. I also understand that payment meters are generally more expensive than straight billing, but 250% more expensive seems somewhat overkill. Issues: If I confront the Landlord about this, and he is overcharging for profit, he would have been doing this for a long tome and has gotten used to the extra money by now. If I drop this on him and force him to lower the rates on the meters, he is not going to be particularly pleased about it. Yes he may be stealing money from me, but human nature being what it is, he's been doing it so long he probably believes he is entitled to do this. It's going to cause bad blood. Resolutions? Ideally I would like to do away with the Landlord meter and have my electricity supplied directly. I've tried to look into the laws on this but I can't really find anything that is specific or even related to my situation. The only things I tend to get when I do a search is for switching electricity suppliers. Also having the meter reduced to a more reasonable rate, say, 22p per unit would be ok. Or even, I would be willing to pay the landlord a flat fee per month to cover my share of the standing charge and have the meter set to the actual price per unit with VAT that he is paying. What do you think? I am going to ask the Landlord to look at his electricity bill soon. If he does show it to me, then I can explain this issue to him with actual irrefutable numbers and math. But what should I do if he refuses to show it to me? Anyway, thank you again for reading this and thanks in advance for any replies. Regards Col

Hi Not been back on this website for a good couple of years (which is obviously a good thing) but recently encountered an issue which has\will threaten to undo all the good work of getting all blemishes issue's of my Credit history... I have a perfect credit score for the past 4-5 years till today. I had a lease car for 3 years (Banque PSA Finance), no payments missed including the last payment, when the car was returned that there was excess mileage and damage to an alloy....for which they then forwarded me an invoiced ..which I assumed could not be added onto the end Agreement and treated like it was an additional Payment. I sent two letters asking to set up an Payment plan (one on the 22/02/16 and one 18/04/16) to which I have had no response After finding that my next account has been suspended due to a change in Credit Circumstances, I logged on to find that on March this year they have registered the account as being defaulted (see image) My issue with this is that my contract was for 35 months from 28/08/12 which means the last payment is on the 27 July 2015 which was paid and from my point of the contract was completed and the Invoice for Damage\mileage they have added onto the account and then saying I have defaulted which I believe should be separate ? therefore negating the Default on my Account ? I know previously with help from this forum I have involved the ICO aa few times that have found in my favor and was wondering if it would be worth contacting them again docs1.pdf

Bit of background on this issue. Bought a 11 plate car in Feb 2015 from Bristol Street Motors, had a few issues from purchase which was mainly a problem with the tyre pressure going off but unable to reset it. It went back to Skoda (paid for by Bristol Street) and had an ECU reset. There was another issue with the car revving up when braking which would clear when I pressed the clutch. I told the manager of the service depot in Bristol Street about this ongoing issue and he said he would phone me back to book it back in. He never did. As it was an intermittent issue and didn't want to be back forth yet again, I left it. Fast forward to now, and my cruise control has stopped working. A common fault on these cars is a clutch switch, which would also explain the revving up when slowing down, according to several posts on Skoda forums. My question is would I have a claim with Bristol Street, even though they only supplied 3 months warranty. I know I am likely to have to prove that the faults are related and it was likely an underlying issue that was there when sold. I want to go down first and see what they say (likely to **** off I guess) but thought I would ask here first to see what you guys would do and be armed with any relevant info before hand. Thanks in advance DY

I may or may not be receiving an NIP in the post soon. But I wish to vent my spleen somewhat over the circumstances of two incidents within the last few days involving traffic lights. The first was at a flyover with a roundabout underneath. There were three sets of lights to pass through in order for me to proceed onto a slip road where traffic merges from a 30 MPH zone to a 50 MPH portion of the motorway. I passed through the first set of lights on green at 20-25 MPH. The second set of lights changed to amber as I was crossing from one side of the road onto the slip road only for me to be met by the red lights of a pedestrian crossing. Which turned from amber to red at the same time as the second (previous) set of lights. There was no delay between them. There was a small space before the third set of lights for approximately one car length to stop. Because I was in the process of accelerating onto the slip road I would have had to slam on the brakes to avoid passing through the lights on red. This seemed counter intuitive to what I would expect when driving onto a slip road. Regardless of what the law says regarding driving through red lights. I felt it was not a fair system and in fact dangerous. I reported this to TFL on their website (without giving them my details of course). I have been beating myself up about it since. I am not sure if there were cameras there or not and it caused me considerable anxiety. The second time was only yesterday. There is a dual carriageway with a 40 MPH limit. This particular set of lights is quite odious. It has a red light camera (I assume) and speed camera lines on the junction. It is a major road junction that allows turning of traffic onto a minor road. I approached it with some trepidation wondering what the best plan of attack was. Begin to slow in preparation for a red light or continue at just under 38 MPH. I made the decision to continue at speed and that was when the lights turned amber. I decided to continue at speed and accelerated ever so slightly. I do not believe I broke the speed limit. However I am unsure if I made it through in time for the light turning red. From my understanding there is no requirement to slow down when approaching traffic lights unless they have already begun changing to amber and you do not think you will be able to cross the junction in time. But I may need my mind refreshing on if the highway code says otherwise. Especially since this was a dual carriageway with a 'continuous' 40 MPH limit. Because this is faster than 30 MPH it requires more stopping distance and this concerns me. Especially since they appear to have placed a speed trap on the junction as well. If you are getting close to the lights at speed (remember I have not broken the speed limit) then it leaves you very little room to stop without slamming on the brakes. But if you are pushed to accelerate through the lights at amber this could place you at risk of being snapped on a speeding charge or possibly being hit on both a red light and a speeding charge. The whole thing appears a bit catch 22 and very suspect IMHO. I have been VERY aware of my driving with regards to traffic lights of late and every time I approach a set I get more cautious and 'driven' to distraction with regards to how they operate and how I should deal with them. I have been driving for over 30 years now and it's only in the last few years I have noticed these issues. I never used to have issue with passing through lights but in recent times it appears the odds are being ever more stacked against drivers to be pushed into 'breaking the law' so to speak. Despite what they keep telling us about it being in order to make things safer for both drivers and pedestrians. The odds are you will make that 'mistake' sooner or later. To me it smacks of both incompetence and a cash grab.

Hi, Last month I opened a Clear Score account to check up on my credit score and see how I was doing. Today was my update day, I logged in to find that I have a CCJ against me which was issued on the 16th of March 16. The web site doesn't give much information, case reference, address, amount and which court issued it: County Court Business Centre The problem is that the address they have used is over a year out of date so I have received no paperwork. I moved out of that address in February 15 and into my fathers address to help him look after my step mother who is seriously ill with MS and bed bound. Just last week I moved out of that address into my girlfriends, who is heavily pregnant and due any day. I am really worried that the bailiffs may turn up and I am not certain what debt it relates to or how to deal with it. I have dug through all my old paperwork I have two debts which are not being paid as I believe them to be statute barred. One is with Barclaycard and the other is with MBNA. The MBNA one is the closest matching, it is roughly £200 difference from the balance that I owe them. The Barclaycard is over £1000 difference. If it is MBNA, the earliest letter I still have from them is dated July 2011, stating that "Following previous correspondence, which confirmed the termination of your MBNA credit agreement".... we will be sending it to a DCA. I have various letters from DCA and then a notice of assignment to Arrow Global Guernsey Limited. I don't have the statements or the letter for when I defaulted but I am sure that it was in early 2010 as that is when I got divorced and had serious financial issues. 1) Is it worth me signing up for Credit Expert to see if the MBNA account appears on file (there is no record of it in Clear Score). And or to obtain more information about the CCJ? 2) Is there any other way to obtain information about the CCJ, the only place I have found is Trust Online and it's behind a pay wall so I'm not sure if it will tell me who submitted the claim. 3) Any suggestions on what I should do next? Many thanks for any advice.

Hi all I have received a date for a county court hearing regarding an outstanding balance on an old Welcome HP agreement. I bought a car on hp 10yrs ago but about a week later, the car fell to pieces and was returned to the dealer. They eventually provided me with a different vehicle but did not give me a new hp agreement to sign. So, the only agreement in place details the vehicle that was returned. There is no signed agreement on the new vehicle. I kept up payment for a few years but eventually came into difficulties and payments ceased. Fast forward a few years to 2013, application for CCJ received, which we defended and a stay was granted. Heard no more until now, received witness statement which says a hearing is listed. My main qustion is, can they enforce this as the vehicle on the agreement was taken back, they have confirmed this in their witness statement, The HP agreement says to terminate the agreement I should return the goods and the creditor is then entitled to half the total amount payable under this agreement. They confirmed the vehicle was returned and by the time payments ceased, I had paid more than half. Yes, another vehicle was provided but this vehicle is not on the HP agreement which they say I am bound by. Any advise would be greatly appreciated. many thanks

Hi All I'm due to have my yearly review shortly and I have been pre warned by a senior manager, although not my direct report, that it may not go well and that I may possibly be forced into a demotion and that this may be due to perceived performance problems. Can they legally take this course of action, should they not at least offer some sort of improvement plan? I must state that this is all theory an conjecture at the moment, I've heard nothing from my managers, and why this manager has warned me isn't entirely clear.. Many thanks in advance..

Hi there (I apologise for the essay in advance) I'm requiring some assistance which seems to be somewhat of an emergency at the moment. While I was at university I had a student account with Lloyds TSB. Everything was fine and there was regular money going into the account , however towards the end of university I had accrued quite a significant amount of debt (as most students do) and as my student account became a graduate account I had gone over my overdraft limit by a few pounds and I had started incurring overdraft charges that were equating up to a substantial amount. I made a small deposit into my account in 04/2009 and that was the last time I used my account, from then on the charges carried on going, however I didn't use the account whatsoever. The closing balance for the account was around £2300 and the account defaulted on 12/11/2009 according to my credit report. This account has been passed around to various DCAs, but was bought by Lowell around 3 years ago and they have passed it around to their other companies (Bryan Carter etc.) I have never made a payment to this balance and I've never claimed that the debt is mine. I sent Lowell a prove it letter a few months ago and they responded in May 2015 by sending me a copy of the last few months of bank statements for the account with Lloyds TSB. The statements also stop at 11/2009. Lowell since then have been sending me letters every week or every two weeks, and last week they now claim they are trying to "escalate" the situation. I'm unsure if this debt is already statute barred or if it will be on 12/11/2015, my concern is that should I send a SAR to Lloyds in order to obtain any information as to when the overdraft was officially withdrawn? and if so should I contact Lowell in order to tell them I have requested additional information from Lloyds. Thank you for taking the time for read this.

Hello, At the end of September 2013 I sold a ford Ka and mailed the V5 to the dvla. I then left the UK in February 2014 upon finally unpacking the last boxes I have noticed that I did not receive a conformation letter from the dvla yet I have for the car I had up to leaving the UK. Is there anything I should do? should I contact the dvla asking? I do not think I have anything with the registration number on either. Thanks.

Hi Guys New to the forum, so hello! Currently looking to source a new purchase mortgage, and had narrowed the choice of with HSBC and Leeds BS. Just to be sure there were no issues with the applications I signed up to Experian and Equifax to take a look. Experian 940 Good / Equifax 463 Good - so naturally didn't think I would have any problems moving forward. Went to see HSBC on sat, they did a very quick check and gave us an AIP - then spoke to Leeds this morning who said they would run a check for an AIP. They called back to say I had been declined due to adverse credit on my Equifax report, she couldn't go into detail over the phone, but I explained about my scores and she asked me to send them through and she would take a look, I also asked for some feedback to point to what she thought was the problem. Now I can't see anything untoward except for an AP on my NatWest Current account from 2012 - the circumstances are NatWest was my main current account and I always had an authorised overdraft of £500 - In early 2012 my partner and I decided to use her account as a joint account (HSBC) so all my salary went there. I didn't automatically close the NatWest account as I thought you never know! I was still being charged for the advantage gold fee and interest on the authorised borrowing, then I received a letter from them asking me to get in touch about unauthorized lending, turns out the account had gone over the £500 limit and charges were being added. I got in touch with NatWest and they took me off advantage gold, and refunded the charges and then I set up a direct debit to clear the account. So the question is, how likely is that the actual issue, and how do I get that corrected, also will HSBC look at that too with a full application and think it's an issue also. Any help or advice would be hugely appreciated Neil

Hi and thanks for taking the time to read. I have just received a small claims form pack (N9) which was issued on 17-Nov-2014 from Northampton county court business centre, for an old debt from Capital One which Arrow Global have purchased. I have looked up on my credit profile and can see a default was registered on 11/02/2009, the last payment for this debt was some months before that so it may possibly be statute barred if I'm correct? I have never acknowledged any letters or had any contact with Arrow Global, nor have I ever had any contact with Capital One since the default, I have just buried my head in the sand as I have never really been in a position to do anything about the debt. I'm a little unsure how to proceed or what to do and any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Hi, This is my first post but I have been looking around on here recently as have been seeking some advice. I haven't been able to find a post similar enough to mine to get an answer so I'm going to tell you about my troubles in hope someone can steer me right! I took out a Barclays Career Development Loan back in 2007. The company I took it out to train with then soon went out of business - I'm sure some of you would've heard of them. 'Connectivity IT Training' based in Docklands, London. I telephoned Barclays after I'd found out to then be told, Ok that's fine, we will take today as your course end date and you can start paying it back. How considerate of them. I made a few payments but seeing as I was on a CDL course, I obviously had no job or low pay. I stopped being able to make payments and the letters stopped coming through. Fast forward to the present day. I moved away from my Mums (I've lived at 7 addresses since then, my most recent has been just under 5 months). At the end of Dec I received a phone call from Westcot asking me if I was me. I was surprised as I have no other outstanding debt (none that would be referred to a collection agency) and as I do get a lot of junk calls I said no. The lady said she would remove my number from their system, end of. I didn't have that number when I signed for the CDL so no idea how they had gotten it. On the 2nd of Jan I received a lovely letter from them to my NEW address. Sent to my name, telling me they are attempting to contact me and that I need to confirm if it's me or not living here before the 12th of Jan or else they will assume the contact information they hold for me is correct. Now if I didn't indeed live here then I would have gotten this letter addressed for someone other than myself and not opened it just binned it and they couldn't assume that I live here etc. I have switched EVERYTHING to this address as I have moved away from the area I used to live in and it's not convenient to pick up post from my parents anymore. I did switch to other addresses I've lived at recently too and they are all previous addresses showing on my Noddle credit report. I could be on the wrong track here and thinking that this is for the Barclays CDL when it isn't however theres nothing else it can be in my opinion. Everything else is paid up to date and I've never missed a payment on anything, ever either. I am also aware that by the middle of this coming November, the loan will be 6 years with no payment or contact so will be 'Statute Barred'. The date of default displays Nov 2009. I'm guessing they are aware of this and trying to get me now before the deadline. Total outstanding is around £8600. I am not in a position to repay this as my girlfriend isn't working (on SMP as we have just had a baby and I am covering all the bills and trying to repay an old credit card which was at £8500 and now down to £5500). Is there anything I can do or anything you can suggest to me? I have no experience with Debt Collection agencies and I also don't want to have any experiences with them! Thank's a lot for reading.

I worked for this company between 28 July this year to 13 August. It was a telephone research company and I wasn't great at it so they hastily sacked me on the day of 13 August (that's the whole truth and I was not guilty of any misconduct or any lies during application or interviews, this is unfortunately the modern economy). I was told to leave on the day and would be paid for the week's notice as provided in the contract of employment. At the end of August I got a payslip saying the pay for my time there was £1050 gross. Now the job was £21,000 p.a. Doing a rough calculation, there are 253 working days in 2014, so daily pay should be roughly £83. That times by the 12 working days I was there + 5 working days for notice period should be £1411 and not £1050. Was I underpaid or is there some leeway in how companies can calculate monthly pay? Now as background info in the employment contract they said their annual leave is caculated from 1 November from one year to the next and they can deduct days over Christmas/New Year from annual leave allowance, would this have played into their calculation for my salary?

Hi guys, I've received a letter from Cabot Financial, regarding a Barclaycard debt. They are asking for 10% of the debt of £3500 as a final payment to close account. I'll be honest and say that I don't remember clearly, but I believe this debt is very old, i.e. around 10yrs or more. I don't have anything showing on my credit files, so could you please advise what I need to do? Thank you.

I think we may have committed benefit fraud! We get pension credit at the moment, both guaranteed and savings. At 12.30pm today we have a compliance meeting at the jobcentre plus office. When we were awarded the savings part of pension credit we had £2000 savings (the only reason we got it). This has now whittled away to just £200! So, without realising it, we have committed fraud because we didn't declare this. Having only just looked into it, not having realised before. Are we likely to just have saving pension credit withdrawn? Are we liable to pay it back? Even more worrying, will we lose pension credit all together? Thus losing support for mortgage interest in the process! This would effectively make us homeless! Please advise?

Greetings, At the moment this is just an enquiry... I returned an item puchesed online via an Amazon seller. They sent the wrong item and so I requested a refund. They sent me a prepaid 2nd class label to return the item via Royal Mail. This has a tracking number. The item was posted on the 3rd of July, it is now the 24th and the item is still showing as "in the system" on RM's website! So the question is who is responsible if this item is missing, me or the seller? Who makes a claim against RM? I assume my original P&P should also be refunded... Many thanks.

Ok, this is a long one so I will keep it as concise as possible. To try and avoid paying out an agreed £5,400 in miss-sold PPI, HSBC decided to illegally register a £9,000 debt in my name so that they could pay the money directly to Metropolitan. This was done in July 2011, two weeks before I was due to be filmed for Dragons Den. The result of the registered debt was that I am still unable to raise any finance for myself or my soon to be closed company and I have lost patent applications worth an awful lot of money. I am in the middle of investigations by both the FOS and the ICO and am soon to be taking legal action against HSBC for compensation of around £10,000,000. For a detailed timeline of events and copies of HSBC documents and internal emails go to the Crocodile Keyboards website. I would appreciate anyone who could spend around ten minutes taking a look and giving their opinion on the legality of what HSBC have been doing. I have been told that I am eligible for legal aid but I am waiting to find out to what extent this help will be. Many thanks.

The bedroom tax is dead. I’ll repeat that in case your eyes deceive you reader, the bedroom tax is dead! There was a hugely significant appeal win in South Wales I discussed and posted about earlier and I called the bedroom tax a lesser spotted Dodo. My apologies reader the bedroom tax is ‘deader’ than that upon reading the actual judgment! http://speye.wordpress.com/2014/02/0...ead-heres-why/ In a nutshell, a first tier tribunal in Bolton has ruled that a bedroom can only defined as such if it's used or furnished as a bedroom, a spare room used as a study or art room are not bedrooms irrespective of size. The implications for LA's if everyone effected appeals is that they will have to inspect every property to ascertain the amount of actual bedrooms there are, rather than relying on info supplied by landlords or tenancy agreements, something LA's have not got the resources to do. It will be interesting to see how HM Gov react to this.

Just had Cabot through the mail with regard a 2K + debt. This was taken out in January 2007 but had a 1 year interest free/no payments thing (meaning I didn't have to start paying until Jan/Feb 2008). My CR file only shows defaults from Jan 2011 but it does state that account closed with OC in June 2008. Now, I am sure that I never made a single payment towards this debt and the default end date is June 2008. Am I right in thinking that defaults are registered after 6 missed payments (6 months) and that this debt is pretty much statute barred? Many thanks for any advice you may have. G

A CASINO has been operating an unauthorised car park for almost seven years. The pay-and-display car park at Grosvenor Casino was given the go-ahead in 2003, with planning officers stipulating that permission would only be given for three years. But an investigation has revealed the company did not renew permission for parking on the site in Ormrod Road, and has since added new signs. It also installed an automatic number plate recognition system, using three CCTV cameras, in March, 2012. Bolton Council planning officer Graeme Mitchell sent a letter to The Rank Group, which owns Grosvenor Casinos, and ParkingEye, which runs the car park, telling them to seek planning permission immediately or risk further action. In the letter he said: “Following recent complaints with regard to this address, it is alleged that an unauthorised change of use has taken place for which we consider planning permission is required. “From the records available to this department, it is clear no permission has either been sought or granted concerning the current use following the expiration of the temporary permission on December 15, 2006.” The company received permission to change the use of the former Sainsbury’s car park in 2003. The car park has spaces for 333 vehicles, with 313 spaces and 20 disabled spaces, and charges £3.20 for 14 hours of parking. A spokesman from Grosvenor Casino said: “The fact we didn’t apply for planning permission in 2006 was due to a simple clerical error. We are keen to put this right and as such have submitted a planning application to that effect. “We are very hopeful this application will be approved so that we can continue to allow the people of Bolton access to this car park rather than having to limit it to our customers only.” http://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/10844108.Bolton_G_Casino_car_park__was_not_legal_for_seven_years_/

HI I'm hoping that someone would be bale to help me with this please. My hubby has had Psoriasis since he was 11 and is now 49. He has had many treatments over the years with light treatment working up until he was about 25 and he also used steroid based creams to. Now when he turned about 30 he found that where the sun used to help it started making it worse and so stopped using light treatments and we were also going thourgh IVF because of a low sperm count and so wanted to make sure that this wasn't affecting the count etc (9 attempts and now have our little miracle aged 9!!!). Anyway...about 15 to 20 years ago he was prescribed a cream called Dermovate mixed with white soft paraffin and this has always cleared it since. He doesn't use it all the time but will use it for a few weeks at a time when he wants to get clear. This has always just been prescribed on a repeat prescription for the past 15 years at our current surgery. At no time as far as we can remember has a doctor called him in about it and if they have then it has still just been repeat prescribed when requested whcih is about every few months. Now a few weeks ago one of the doctors at the surgery requested my husband make an appointment and at this appointment he informed my hubby that where the cream and soft parrafin used to be mixed at the pharmacybut now has to be sent away and so rather than costing a few pounds it is nearly £600 every time they mix a tub!! He asked my hubby if he would mind mixing it himself and of course my hubby said no problem as we understand that is just a crazy cost to the NHS! Now this cream has always been a 50/50 mix (500g dermavate with 500g WSP) but when the first prescription was collected the dermavate had been reduced. Cutting a long story short my hubby went ot see the doctor this week to query this and it was at this meeting that he was informed that it cna thin the skin (well we knew this) but alarmingly he was told that it cna casue cataracts and eye problems. Now the strange thing is my hubby develoed cataracts when he was about 24 and they literally appeared within a few months and he an operation to have them removed. At the time the doctors were suprised that he had got them so young and also so fast but we just thought it was one of those things. Also in 2007 he lost the sight in one eye over a few weeks and on a visit to the opticians was rushed straight to hospital and operated on the next day at Manchester Eye hospital as he had a 180 degree tear in his retina!!! He had suffred no injury to this eye and it was a serious op and he has very limited vision in this eye now. He also sees a consultant regulalry at the hospital as he has glaucoma and so they monitor the pressure etc. My whole worry here is that should he of been repeat prescribed this cream for so long, did it cause is eye problem and the tear in the retina which can never be fixed? I'm not very experainced at all with medical compalints and don't know where to begin....would I be better contacting one of the companies that specialise in these things?