my doctor will be sent a form from the DVLA to fill in re my medical fitness to drive. In the past 3, 4 or 5 months my mental health has been excellent no problems. BUT earlier this year like 7 months ago I (voluntarily) admitted myself to a psychiatric ward and was there for 3 weeks. I know the doctor will have a question to answer along the lines of "has the person been admitted to a hospital in the past 12 months for psychiatric treatement?" Does this mean I won't be allowed to drive until a year has passed since my admission date, even though I have been fine in recent months? Or does it depend on each circumstance? I'm worried about this, I need my driving licence and my life is on hold until I get it back.

Hi, I've just switched electricity supplier and they debited my bank account for the monthly payment on the same day I switched over to them. As I was expecting to pay a month in arrears this has left me short of cash. Is it normal for them to do that? Doesn't seem right. T

Hi, I applied for a provisional driving license in October 2016. To this day (Aug 2017) I am still waiting for it. Today DVLA told me it's still in a queue for a doctor to review but would not tell me how many months or years it would take for that review to happen. DVLA refused to tell me the average or approximate time it takes for a medical review to happen. No info whatsoever...just keep waiting... Is this normal? How long does this normally take? Is there a way I could get a provisional license and my lessons as well as the actual driving license abroad and then use that here? - Sorry, this might be a silly question, but I need options. I desperately need a driving license for work/shopping/doc appointments due to bad back, and it seems it's not possible to do it in the UK due to some internal DVLA backlogs. Thank you for any suggestions x

Hi all. I suspect that this is no big deal but I had a head injury whilst at work last Friday, attempted to work today but realised that I was suffering from concussion. Before I left, the health and safety manager wanted to interview me about the accident and just as we were starting, he took me by surprise and took his phone out and began to audio record the conversation and asked quickly if I was okay with this, to which I replied that I was. Obviously I am not complaining about this because I did agree that it was okay, but I am curious as to whether this is the norm?

Within the reply I received from the judicator was; "the business has accepted that its level of service was poor during their investigation of your **** fraud allegations and complaint. In this respect, the business has agreed to my suggestion that they award a payment of £150 for any trouble and upset caused" The above offer/award is only available to me if I sign to accept that it is a "full and final settlement of this complaint". Although this would not prevent me asking an ombudsman to make a final decision.

Will try to simplify this down and not elaborate too much, I have a tendency to over communicate. long story short, I am 38. Took out a loan with NatWest I don't remember how long ago but it must been in my mid to late 20's. Was unable to make regular payments, it went back and forth actually for years, sort of on hold. I commence work and commenced payments, regular every month for several years, £250, £150, £100 etc. It was never agreed in writing by me I just started to pay, NatWest did write to me once to ask for my budget details, I responded with a £250 payment that month. Fast forward it must be 10 years now ? £15k is now longer outstanding or what ever it was. Its now under £2k. Right this is were it gets interesting, I was working with a debt recovery agency, every month I would log into my online banking (not NatWest obviously) pull up make a payment and send £150, £250 My last payment was over £700, The debt collection agency which I had paid over £10k with over the last few years now, they suddenly wrote to me and said. Dear xx We have been instructed we are no longer managing your account hence do not make any further payments. Roughly that is what it said I was confused by this as I had just made a huge payment of over £700 and was down to a 5% or 10% of the orginal amount. Why would NatWest pull the account back. I will be honest and say at this time which I understand was just before Xmas last year, I feel I had around £1800 left to pay. Ok please continue with me. I was out at lunch time today and decided to pop into Natwest and ask what are they doing with my account ... so understand my surprise when this happened. Till girl, thank you bud01 (me) for providing your account number and sort code (I didn't have the sort code had to tell her the branch). I can see that your account is £2000 in credit. Can you double check that please. Sure, your account is £2000 in credit, (my current account). I explained the situation and she asked that I call the collections team. Fast forward past me buying a coffee and sandwich and taking over a meeting room to make a call to Natwest. I speak to a guy in the collections team, he is only interesting in knowing if I own my own house and I am who I say I am, which I honestly explained, I am renting, and I am mr x etc. He says I have to go through to another department, debt department or some thing I cant remember. I get though to a girl and explain the situation and ask her the following. 1- If my account is in credit why haven't you communicated to me and how could it be I am in credit 2- Why have you not communicated to me, and why did you dis-engage the collection vendor that I was working with monthly, and were is your communication to me irrespective of the monetary aspects. She went away and checked with another team and came back and said. Your loan account has had to be closed. You have a corrupted loan. Your debt has been moved to your current account. You are not in credit but in debt for £2000 At this point this upset me, I did the only thing I could think of and asked that every thing be documented and sent to me Has any one even heard of any thing like this? A few of my thoughts. 1- I should not have contacted Natwest, I knew I owed around that figure or maybe £1200, I should have let them finally come back to me, or maybe never come back to me. Obviously that is being un-unethical which is not the way I am living my life, hence I wanted to go into the Bank today and look into this. 2-If my current account is in credit, it is credit, there is a big difference between being -£2000 and being in credit by £2000. If I owe £2000 and my current account which is still to this day is in credit by £2000 then I don't owe any thing, their mistakes or issues is not my concern. 3- If my loan account is closed then unless that has been communicated to me in writing, the moment that account is closed then my loan is forfeited I don't know what is going on here but some thing fishy is happening, if my current account was minus or in debt £2000 then I could have walked out of the bank and would have taken it on the surface as 1+1 =2. Canceled my on going working payment schedule with debt recovery vendor. No communication for nearly a year current account in credit by the same amount of money I am in debt. Loan account closed. What do I do here? if every one is in agreement Natwest is fine here and I should pay then I may simply make four £500 payments. I am 38 years old. Work in IT in banking area. After my July pay review I am on £53900 (excluding over time) £2k loan is not a big issue, What do I do here? What is this called that NatWest is doing? Loan account closed = loan closed ? Thanks any one that can help on this. And if any one from NatWest is reading this, you are very unprofessional in the manner you have delt with my account, you stopped me making my regular payments which I was actually enjoying doing, the recovery company sent me a stupid letter with zero on it about what was happening, and then you do not communicate to me for nearly a year, now I find my loan account closed and my current account in credit, but also in debt. What are you guys doing?

hello everyone hope you can help Ive been a lurker for a while - and been following advice without needing to post anything - so far until now ( thank you to all as you guys are amazing at what you do, especially helping noobs like me ) Anyway I had a simply be account and got into some arrears - the original credit limit was £350 but with added charges I ended up paying back over £1200 - have just finished paying the amount back and wanted to claim back admin charges and insurance added on to the account. Sent away for a SAR with the fee - and have today received a large pack of documents with recordings. Thing is - the pack seems to literally be loads of screen shots from their system I imagine - and I cannot make heads or tails of it - I was expecting to see copies of collection letters or arrears letters - or statements even notices of defaults but nothing- literally nothing about going into arrears that I can tell is this the usual things they send out ? it is data on purchases etc How is someone who does not work there suppose to figure this out ? also the account was opened in 2011 and I have seen in the insurance section of the pack it says - insurance opted out 2012 does this mean that I only opted out of the insurance in 2012? thanks for your help in advanced vol

Hi Guys and Gals Last year, I hit my creditors with CCA letters and all failed to comply, so I stopped payments to all of them as advised here. today I received a call from another DCA about one of the debts, didn't catch the company name, asking me if I had received their letter about a 10 year old Egg debt. I haven't had one, so just said that I didn't know what he was talking about. My question is, once the letter turns up, do I go through the same CCA process again with these guys? Also, will this go on forever too, changing DCA's and me having to go through the same process until the debt becomes SB or they manage to dig out the credit agreement? One last thing, somehow, they got my phone number at a new address that is ex directory and only a handful of friends and family has?! I asked the guy not to call me again and just write, my creditors have my family address and I go back there every week to collect post. I'm a bit concerned that if they have the number, it will be possible to get the address too. Thanks for your help. Andy

Can an employer invoke a condition with regards to changing shifts if there's an agreement to do so that was dated years ago? ie if an agreement from say 1990 says they can change a shift start time with 24 hours notice but the company has always given a weeks notice, can they insist on changing the shift without notice? Or because they've never invoked this condition does it become non existant and they still have to give a weeks notice?

Hi all, I have a full 10 day hearing coming up for discrimination, whistle-blowing, victimization, harassment & constructive dismissal. The respondents asked me to forward a figure that i would settle for. I did this and now i have received a nasty letter from them. The respondents response is that they will only explore settlement if i drop the whistle-blowing element of the claim. This is odd as they asked me to give them a figure and now they are saying they will not explore settlement until i drop the whistle-blowing element. The respondents are the big public sector employer that has been in the press about using gagging orders in settlement agreements. I wonder if this is their new way of shutting up whistle-blowers a bit of black mail i.e drop the whisle-blowing and we might settle. Any views on the above, is this just normal game playing now that hearing isn't too far away?