Not really surprising that he lost his claim to be honest and his points of contention [i.e aggravated damages from the bank] have little or no relevance to the wider issue of bank charges. I wish him all the best with his appeal, but I don't hold out much hope of success with it.

Hi all, a newbie to this forum [what an excellent forum it is as well] and am writing this on behalf of my mother, who has had some rather unpleasant dealings with the above bank. To cut a long story short, the account was a standard one, with a debit card and a cheque book. It did not, however have an overdraft facility available and subsequently she eventually decided to close the account andtake her business elsewhere. Since then, the bank have been continuing to impose charges which, to date have now reached £835.90. The seems to have arisen from returned cheques, which total £50 each time, £34 for a failed direct debit and a daily unauthorised overdraft charge of £25. This matter has now been placed in the hands of a debt recovery company and, when informed that no payment will be forthcoming, due to the dubious nature of the charges it has now been referred to their legal department. Steps have been taken to quantify the charges that have been imposed during the past six years [a formal request under the data protection act, as per the template letter one on this site, accompanied by the statutory maximum £10] and I fully expect that to reveal enough evidence with which to pursue a claim for monies which were taken by the bank during this period. I'm fairly comfortable with the procedure to go against claiming any outstanding amount back, however does anyone else here have any experience of having to contest a claim from their bank for alleged charges, as well as pursuing a separate claim themselves? If the bank decide to take action and a claim form is issued, how best to go about defending such action? Apologies for the long length of this post, however if anybody else has experienced similar problems with their bank attempting to claim further monies and how they subsequently defended this action, I would be extremely grateful to hear from you.