Thanks for the advice - hadn't thought about the fact that it has to be £5,000 or under for small claims court. I do intend to do a lot more reading up on the site before taking the first step though.

we have only just become aware of this group and the fact that bank charges are unlawful. We have suffered at the hands of the halifax since we joined it in Nov 2002. having gone through all our statements since that date we have realised we have paid £5,600.00 in charges!!! We were gobsmacked that it added up to that much. There have been many many times when we have struggled to feed our family and get through the month until next pay day due to hugh bank charges. Of course, the knock on effect is that the following month you then have to try and pay those people whose direct debits didn't get made as well as being into the overdraft more due to the banks unfair charges. Just want to check that as we have all the statements and have gone through them we can now send the preliminary letter asking for our money back. (we are counting all references to 'charges as notified' is this correct?