Hi everyone. I am posting this on behalf of a friend who has an issue with her rent. She is a full time student and was receiving full housing benefit of £66.49 per week. But 8 months into her course the council have sent her a letter stating that her student bursary had been wrongly assessed over 52 weeks instead of 26 weeks and her housing benefit award had been revised. She was told that her benefit was coming down from £66.49 to £19.11 with immediate effect and she would have to fork out the rest despite studying full time and therefore not being in work, and being a single parent of two children. She has already budgeted her money for Christmas and she has a number of essential outgoings so she has contacted them to ask if she could pay a slightly reduced monthly payment than what they are asking for until 21st January when her financial situation improves. However the council have refused this offer of payment despite the fact that this was all caused by their error and she is being told a week after they sent out this letter that if she doesn't pay her rent in full that they will take her to court and seek to repossess her home. Any help on this matter is much appreciated

Thanks for the reply. Some of the letters could come in very handy. Sorry I should have explained that I am using the hardship route. There are a couple of other issues which caused my account to go much further into arrears. I was already slightly over my overdraft when I lost my job and the charges where mounting up so with this in mind I went into a branch of Lloyds TSB to cancel all of my outgoings from the account and to explain my situation to them. So it was to my surprise that a number of items were still being paid out of my account on a monthly basis and therefore my charges were increasing even further. I went back to the branch to find out why this was and they admitted that in error they had cancelled my direct debits but the standing orders remained in place. The member of staff who I spoke to (who I must add was very helpful), told me that because this was a mistake made by Lloyds TSB that if I contacted the collections department that they would be able to cancel all of my charges. However when I did contact them I was told that this would not be possible. Hence Lloyds TSB still believe I owe them over £1000. I am hoping that if I remind them this fact that they may right off what they say I still owe and pay me back what I have paid them because of their error.

Hi everyone. I've just found out about this website today and have so far found it a goldmine of information. I am currently seeking to reclaim bank charges from Lloyds TSB for £1685 after slipping over my overdraft limit of £250 when I lost my job in 2009. The account is now defaulted and has been passed on to a collection agency and I am slowly paying it off at rate of just over £5 a week. However I have heard word that since I am disputing this debt I am not legally required to be paying anything. Is this the case even if I have not taken the case any higher than a few letters? And is there anyway I can request the default be removed from my credit file? Is there anybody who can tell me where I could find a template letter to send to both Lloyds and the collection agency stating that I do not intend to pay off any more of this "debt"? If so I'll dance at their wedding!!