Statement on Ofwat and rebuilding public trust in the water sector READ MORE HERE: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/statement-on-ofwat-and-rebuilding-public-trust-in-the-water-sector

Alert for charities - use the regulated financial sector READ MORE HERE: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/alert-for-charities-use-the-regulated-financial-sector

hi there people has anyone been on a sector based work academy before?

Property Fraud: Shawbrook Bank and Mortgage broker NRG ltd. I would like to contribute my experience to forewarn others of the type of property frauds that exist which snatches your property in an ‘organized way’ or rather what I would describe as ‘organized crime’ which could leave you unexpectedly damaged due to a planned repossession by the organizers. The property industry like any other will have plenty of corruption opportunities in it so the consumer needs a lot more protection than what we have today. It will take up a lot of space to describe my full personal experience I am going to focus on just listing the sort of behaviours people need to look out for. But briefly my situation was that I had some capital to pay for deposits but I was unemployed, however property courses teach us that we can solve this problem by joint venturing or teaming up in a partnership. Quite unexpectedly, I found such a partner but as he trusted his broker due to his own property portfolio achievements, he asked me to trust this broker as well. I offered the partner a free 10% ownership plus no costs to be born for his 10% ownership. Unfortunately the broker was not loyal to this venture ie to me but pretended to be. The broker who carried out the following acts on me is called NRG Ltd, (Mr David Beck) in collusion with his bank contacts at Shawbrook Bank. Mortgage brokers just like any other salesman have plenty of scope to misguide us deliberately into very expensive, complex and unwanted strategies/products which are designed to give them and third parties extra control over you and to steer your acquisition process according to the outcome they desire which can in a many cases be to snatch/grab your property from you because they see profit in it. Brokers can pretend that the options are few when in reality they just don’t want to search for companies with a favourable mortgage product for the client because the broker and his mates wants your property. So they want to direct you only towards the company in which they have their known contacts established because they need their contacts to study your bank balance and arrange for delaying the bank decision for as long as 4/5 months until all your money or financial budgeting is exhausted or out-of date, and you are about to lose your vendor and purchase. 3 Particularly vulnerable are new investors (eg myself) who might not know the loop holes in the process or implications of using a bridge loan, or how a short-term loan contract might be abused to lead to a repossession opportunity for the bank on behalf of those who want the property. But only a disloyal broker will be one who does not explain all these things when offering a complex strategy because they want you to fall into their pit of tricks and traps. 4They will use a false promise or description to lure you /force you into a short-term contract but once you have entered it, all they have to do is come up with a lying excuse not to do their job of executing the tasks which involve delivering their promises or the representations made before the contract. They then pretend they are trying out new applications for you, urge you to spend more money eg on surveys and more for their fees for trying, but at all times they coordinate with their contacts at the bank to refuse the application. These refusals can be identified as false due to the way they rely on a ‘subjectivity’ or arbitrary basis/criterion of judging and not a coherent, evidence based, law based reasoning. 5 What most people will be unaware about is the extent of how far they coordinate with their bank contacts in order to create a repossession situation. In my case this was very simply achieved. They knew I had only so much savings to be able to fund only one set of mortgage, brokerage, legal, survey fees, but they did not want to me to opt for the long-term mortgage ie they had manipulated me into the short-term loan method against my wishes; so this created the on-going process for more application expenses needed to be repeated within the short -term contract, so one become trapped, as one no longer has the money to finish off the strategy. Furthermore, there was a purpose why the bank waited 4 months to issue the short-term loan contract, this is to reach the point when the threat of losing a vendor becomes imminent, which enables them to impose unfavourable loan terms at the 11th hour. After 4 months of waiting, the option to pull out is not the same, it would only happen at the expense of losing the property as the vendor will be too frustrated. This way we are channelled into taking on a risky route that would otherwise never have been taken, had we been told in advance all the missing information and that a bank might take 5 months to decide. This bank is called, ‘Shawbrook’ famously known for their mortgage packages being most expensive. 6 After the first 6 months of ownership, I had received some extra money to finish off the rest of the 3 separate mortgage applications (this strategy was about 3 flats needing to be converted to leases first) the broker started coming up with new excuses not to try. He started saying that the 3 applications were going to be too expensive and that my only hope was to apply for a long term mortgage with the same bank. The question is why has he taken me through a short-term contract to : 1) identify that the 3 residential mortgages would be too expensive compared to a single mortgage when he should have known this from the beginning, and, 2) if the only option is to end up with the same long-term application then why did he not opt for this the first time around and saved me this unnecessary repeat application ? The answer is that they wanted me to be depleted of funds as that is s the surest way of setting the scene for repossession process. This bank then took another 6 weeks to deliver only an indicative offer (meaning it was an uncertain and unconfirmed offer) but after noticing that I had some funds injected to proceed. It struck me as abnormal that a bank who had already received regular mortgage payments from me is now having difficulty doing an internal conversion from one of their own loans into another one of their own loans within reasonable time, knowing that by this stage I will have spent thousands of pounds reaching this uncertain stage which meant the property was still not mine. I did not understand why it was only an indicative offer given that I was promised by the broker that after I had spent 6 months proving myself of keeping up mortgage payments I would qualify for such entitlement better than when I had started out. Furthermore, I was in a partnership arrangement with someone who had a strong income record and a property portfolio themselves, yet I was still not being given the trust that normally would have been given in this situation. It turned out that they wanted to find a new excuse to fail so they asked to inspect all my bank balances and at this stage I started to feel that this short-term loan contract was just an excuse to spy more into someone’s personal situation irrespective of whether it was relevant to judging the mortgage payments or not, which had already been met consistently. There was another long delay, this time it was reaching nearly the end of the contract, infact exactly a week before the end date I was given a ‘declined’ decision based on my bank balances. But they discriminated me in that they said they would be happy to grant the mortgage to the partner only but not in partnership. In other words this decline was to exclude me from the purchase after it was my capital that had paid for all the acquisition costs, repeat applications, renovations and revaluations to the property, so it was in a ready-made state for someone else to takeover. This tactic (of using the indicative offer to hold on to my time waiting to the end of the contract) was to leave me facing a short notice sales decisions, coupled with a large increased interest rate penalty for not paying off a bridge loan within 3 weeks, was deliberate to create a pressure point so as to force me to give up the property to an auction where they can pick it up for cheap or be forced to compromise on sales price so that their secret buyers and agents can pick it up for cheap. After this news, I searched for other property experts to consult, and I was horrified to discover that the 3 mortgage applications were meant to take place at the beginning along with the lease conversions so that a short-term mortgage was not a threat of uncertainty. So I had been well and truly mislead. Yet this broker claimed to have 16 years of experience who had taken my ex-business partner through this process with success for him and others. There were many other clues, evidences which will make this report too long to describe that the broker was in cahoots with the bank to achieve this outcome. Does anyone know the best action on this matter?

Pretty shocking,when it was the Insurance companies themselves who were bleating about referral fees adding to the costs of increased premiums. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/news/article-2268765/Admiral-risks-fury-law-firm-tie-save-accident-fee-deals.html

Spain is to overhaul its stricken banking sector after European Union regulators approved restructuring plans, as nationalised Bankia said that it would cut 6,000 jobs and report a loss of around €19bn this year. Bankia, whose shares were suspended from trading on Wednesday by regulators, said that it would cut 6,000 jobs, or around 28pc of its staff, by 2015 as it tried to stem losses. The bank said it intended to return to profit in 2013, but warned that it expected to report a loss of €19bn this year. Bankia will also close 1,100 branches as part of the restructuring. Earlier, the European Commission approved restructuring plans for four of Spain’s nationalised banks, authorising a cash injection of almost €40bn (£32bn) from a fund secured by Eurozone partners. The European Commission said the restructuring of the banks "will allow them to become viable in the long-term without continued state support" while the plans contain provisions to limit the distortions to competition. The four stricken banks - Bankia, Novagalicia Banco, Catalunya Banc and Banco de Valencia - will receive combined recapitalisation of €36.9bn from a €100bn emergency fund secured by eurozone partners in June. Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9708426/Debt-crisis-Spain-to-overhaul-banking-sector-as-Bankia-cuts-6000-jobs.html

Follows report by the Public Accounts Commission. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19839836