Information Comissioner Refuses to Act

[rorygemwriter]

The bank would not provide statements or records. I applied to the bank under a subject access request and sent the £10 fee. The bank sent a bundle of information but not the account information. I wrote back to the bank and complained to the IC. The IC wrote to the bank who said they had sent all the information so the IC says the act is complied with.

 

So how do I get the account records?

 

Obviously I will write back to the IC but essentially it seems all the bank has to do is say it sent the information and it appears that the IC will believe them. This is not a happy position.

 

Any advice welcome.

[BankFodder]

Has the IC said that this is his final decision? Have you actually started a complaint. Have you showed him the bundle which you received so that he is able to from an assessment? Has the IC given any info as to whther his decidion can be appealed?

 

I agree with you that this doesn't look good.

Send a private mail to Diddled who I believe has some experience of dealing with the IC

[diddled]

After my experiences with Information Commissioner sounds about right

In my case the

1. IC carried out an assessment

2. Failed to examine the banks data

3. Then based her decision that the bank was likely to have complied

with the Act by accepting explanations the bank gave in it's response

4. Informed me that it was open for me to challenge the bank's

alleged non-compliance through the Courts.

5. Advised that IC has only limited resources, and they had to utilise

these as best they could

6. Its small wonder that UK's interpretation of the Data Protection

Directive is being investigated by EU Commission

7. There has been a lot written about EU commencing infraction

proceedings against the UK

8. Under FOI I requested details of EU concerns (which have not been

made public) to both the Department of Constitutional Affairs and

Information Commissioner

9. My application was refused, because the investigations were, and I

believe still are in progress and the distinct possibility of legal

proceedings against UK

10. I returned to Hansard to research the DPA. It is my view that the Act

is not being interpreted as was intended during the bills passage

through Parliament.

[Seminole]

Presumably if the bank succeeds in using this stunt, you can still issue proceedings for an estimated amount. Would they then not be obliged to produce this information to defend the claim?

[diddled]

The burden of proof lies with the person making the claim, so if the bank chooses to destroy its records and claims no such data existed at the time of you making your request there is not much that you can do

Banks know just about every trick in the book

[Seminole]

Yes, but sure that sort of argument is implausible particularly if the claimant is a current customer. Like most other businesses surely this sort of data has to be retained for six years for tax purposes and almost certainly it would be caught up in the statutory requirement to keep records.

 

At the very least they would require a transaction analysis to deal with a tax enquiry and any such analysis would have to be referenced to customer accounts. Even if they argued that they couldn't produce a statement, they should still be able to say what was charged to the account.

 

Finally, are they not obliged to keep this sort of information for the authorities in case of suspected money laundering?

 

It's fairly widely accepted that banks are incompetent but I just don't see how lying in this way is a plausible defence.

[diddled]

Unfortunately the claimant has the impossible task of having to provide hard evidence that the bank is lying

[rorygemwriter]

Thank you for your helpful replies. I will write a calm letter to the Information Commissoner and see how far I get. The bank say that the friend for whom I'm trying to sort this say that they are owed money. Of this the issue of unlawful charges is only a part. The rest is outside the scope of this site. It would actually have been helpful if the bank had issued proceedings because then we would have got the information. Will let you know how I get on.

[BankFodder]

I think that you could up the ante a little here.

 

Firstly the standard of proof in civil proceedings is not high. It is merely "on the balance of probabilities". This is much less than beyond doubt which is the standard in criminal trials. The civil standard is merely that you have to show the court that it is more likely than not that you are telling the truth. In theory this means 51%.

I think that if you were before a judge who was sufficiently troubled by the behaviour of the bank that he might be quite strict about the 51%.

 

Secondly, I think that it would be interesting to say that there is an implied term in the contract that the Bank will comply with reasonable requests such as would be received and accepted by any reasonable bank and also that it would comply with it's legal duties as seen fit by the legislature from time to time.

 

If it came to it, you could include these in a claim and try your luck. It would need a bit more thought than I have given it in this post but you get the picture. You could even ask for specific performance of these implied contractual duties and keep the claim within the small claims track if you were careful.

[rorygemwriter]

This topic was closed on 03/05/19.

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