If you have incurred charges in the last 12 months you can still submit a claim for hardship though it will depend on how much charges you have incurred as to whether they see it as a hardship on your finances.

My partner and I opened a joint account with the RBS in January of this year. In that time we have had £711 of charges taken from our account.

We are currently in receipt of benefits and have 4 children. Earlier this year the benefits got messed up and as a result did not have enough money going through the account to cover the direct debits that were set up, this therefore resulted in us going overdrawn and we have not been able to get out of it since.

We were informed from someone from the benefits office that it is actually against the law for the bank to take money from your benefits so these charges should never have been applied.

I would like to put an application in to have these refunded under the hardship provision but would also like to notify my bank that they cannot take money from our benefits but would like to know how to go about this.

I would appreciate any help and advice in reclaiming these charges and stopping further charges being applied as I have further charges to be taken from our account next month and can see no end to the nightmare.