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Lloyds bank – phantom changes to standing order reference leading to local council CCJ


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Yes, what I mean is whether the reference numbers on the OP's statements are all the same – in other words relating to the same instruction or whether they are different – indicating that different standing orders have been set up

 

Hi BF and Andy -

 

I just checked the bank statements supplied by Lloyds for my previous SAR under the old regime. It it shows the name of the beneficiary, date and amount. It doesn't show anything more.

 

In this case, shall I submit an SAR under new regime and ask for the mandate number as such?

 

Thank you for your help.

Jay

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Why don't you start off by calling them and asking them if such a numbering system exists. Go from there

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Just done a random search on Standing Order Mandates...every bank listed with their forms......except guess who.....you can get the business version..the international version.....no sign of a personal account one.

 

 

Strange .......

 

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=standing+order+mandate&ei=pX8IW8WEL4mvgAbNvaD4BQ&start=0&sa=N&biw=1396&bih=668

 

Some notes from Money facts.......

 

" You are the only person who can change the date or payment amount on your standing order."

 

How do I cancel a standing order?

 

" You are the only person that can cancel a standing order. You can cancel a standing order at any point in branch, over the phone or via secure online banking."

 

https://moneyfacts.co.uk/guides/banking/what-is-a-standing-order170611/

 

 

Andy

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Just done a random search on Standing Order Mandates...every bank listed with their forms......except guess who.....you can get the business version..the international version.....no sign of a personal account one.

 

 

Strange .......

 

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=standing+order+mandate&ei=pX8IW8WEL4mvgAbNvaD4BQ&start=0&sa=N&biw=1396&bih=668

 

Some notes from Money facts.......

 

" You are the only person who can change the date or payment amount on your standing order."

 

How do I cancel a standing order?

 

" You are the only person that can cancel a standing order. You can cancel a standing order at any point in branch, over the phone or via secure online banking."

 

https://moneyfacts.co.uk/guides/banking/what-is-a-standing-order170611/

 

 

Andy

 

Thank you for checking Andy

How likely is it that Lloyds would have their reference? I haven't been able to call them.this evening, so will do so first thing tomorrow morning. And record the conversation.

Thanks

Jay

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If all of the other banks use internal mandate/reference numbers then it is beyond belief that Lloyds doesn't as well.

 

It would be helpful if somebody could turn up some examples of internal reference numbers from other banks and put them up here so we can see the format and also understand where they are published

 

I think that when you talk to them you need to ask them about some internal reference number system.

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I've just telephoned Lloyds bank to ask a few questions about standing orders. They insist that they don't allocate any internal reference numbers at all.

 

I think the next thing to find out is if the cancellation of the standing order leave some kind of trail on their systems and if the setting up of a new standing order also leaves a trail.

 

I think a good experiment might be if you went to your account and cancelled a standing order. You can then set it up again. Then when you do an SAR, see what trace it has left. If there has been no trace then we have a problem but if there is a trace then as far as I can work out at the moment, that would be extremely compelling evidence that Lloyds systems have malfunctioned. Maybe I've got the logic wrong – but as far as I understand it, this will be extremely damaging evidence against Lloyds.

 

If you use online banking then you could go ahead and do this now. Similarly, you could try the same experiment as well by going into the branch and doing it over the counter. So you would have two experiments running – one online experiment and one over-the-counter experiment. When you had re-established both standing orders you could then send off your SAR and we could see what trace it has left.

 

In fact this idea seems so good that I'm amazed I didn't come up with it before!!!

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I think what happened here in August 2016, was that the council contacted your Bank Lloyds to say that the standing order needed to go through to a slightly different account. Then when the change was made Lloyds did not add the reference back on.

 

Normally you would think it was up to the Bank account holder with the standing order arrangement to make this change over, but if there was no contact made with you, then I suspect the council informed Lloyds of the change required to maintain the standing order arrangement.

 

Lloyds are correct I thnk that they would not allocate their own reference, but simply apply the reference that the account holder has supplied which will be the councils reference. The original standing order would have been one record and then when the change was requested someone has not added the reference back on for the new record.

 

If you find out that the council did request Lloyds to make standing order update, then a complaint to the council should be successful, because the council should have been aware that there might be issues with payment into the correct account with the correct reference and therefore the council should have made more of an effort to resolve this, before going for a CCJ.

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This is an amazing theory and it sounds extremely solid. Do you have some basis for suggesting this or is it simply speculation. If what you suggest happened is actually the case, then the whole thing is extremely serious because not only would the council be liable but also Lloyds bank would be liable because they make it very clear that no one can change or cancel a standing order except yourself.

 

I think that this definitely needs an SAR to the council. If they have taken this action then one would expect that there would be some reference to it was some trace in their files.

 

It sounds a highly credible idea – although it would run counter completely to Lloyds rules and of course it would amount to taking instructions from somebody who was not the customer. If we were dealing with a direct debit then maybe it would be understandable – but if it happened with the standing order – wow!

 

Of course we would expect also to see a trace in a disclosure from Lloyds as well.

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This is an amazing theory and it sounds extremely solid. Do you have some basis for suggesting this or is it simply speculation. If what you suggest happened is actually the case, then the whole thing is extremely serious because not only would the council be liable but also Lloyds bank would be liable because they make it very clear that no one can change or cancel a standing order except yourself.

 

I think that this definitely needs an SAR to the council. If they have taken this action then one would expect that there would be some reference to it was some trace in their files.

 

It sounds a highly credible idea – although it would run counter completely to Lloyds rules and of course it would amount to taking instructions from somebody who was not the customer. If we were dealing with a direct debit then maybe it would be understandable – but if it happened with the standing order – wow!

 

Of course we would expect also to see a trace in a disclosure from Lloyds as well.

 

I have dealt with payment issues for a very long time, not for Lloyds.

 

It would not surprise me, if there was some contact between council and Lloyds. You would think that the council would write to the person concerned telling them to cancel the standing order and set up a new arrangement into a new account. But if the council had several thousand standing orders that would be a real hassle.

 

The council could have set up some internal process to just transfer the money over. What would have been much simpler is to inform the bank sending the money that they needed to send it to a different account and I think that is what may have happened. The council and lloyds would have considered this to be in everyones interest to maintain the payment arrangements and to save on costs for everyone.

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Thank you.

 

This certainly raises an interesting avenue of research to try and understand why it happened. If you have been dealing with payment issues so long, are you able to confirm that it is likely that there would be some trace left either with the council or with the bank – or both?

 

Do you think the bank would have realised that they were not dealing with their customer?

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Thank you.

 

This certainly raises an interesting avenue of research to try and understand why it happened. If you have been dealing with payment issues so long, are you able to confirm that it is likely that there would be some trace left either with the council or with the bank – or both?

 

Do you think the bank would have realised that they were not dealing with their customer?

 

If my theory is correct, the council would have received £xx into an account and not been able to reconcile it with the councils debtor due to lack of reference number.

 

When the council then went through accounts reconciliation they would have been left with this sum on their account. If the sum of money was a unique amount or few debtors paid this amount, then a simple search could have revealed the sender of this money. However, I suspect the council made little effort to conduct the data searches and therefore the money was never reconciled to the OP's account. The council then continued to deal with it as non payment ending up with a CCJ.

 

I think the OP should find out from Lloyds whether they received notification from the council about the standing order account issue close to August 2016. I am pretty sure the council would have informed Lloyds that they were paying a standing order into an account which was going to be changed to a different council account. If Lloyds changed it over, it made no difference to the OP, as the sum of the SO and recipient was going to be the same.

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I wonder if there is a useful FOIA request can be made here to discover whether during 2016 there were changes to standing order accounts. What do you suggest?

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I wonder if there is a useful FOIA request can be made here to discover whether during 2016 there were changes to standing order accounts. What do you suggest?

 

Yes could ask the question council how they processed this account change. Did they contact the sending bank for standing orders.

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Of course – we are left with another problem and that is that it appears that the standing order carry reference, then didn't, then did, then didn't et cetera. Does your theory answer this conundrum?

 

I suppose one could also FOIA the council to discover how they deal with payments which don't appear to carry a reference. I suppose we could even ask how many of these they receive a year

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Hi BF and UncleBulgaria -

 

Thank you very much for your input.

I just went o the bank with my dad, and we had set up 2 SO's today to be paid out on the 29th and 30th of next week every month until cancelled.

 

I aked for a summary of all outstanding SO's on my dads account, and there was no mandate reference of any kind. But what appeared though was the following:

 

Seq No:

002 - LBTH SC £88.96

003 - Payment to J U***n £20.00

004 - Payment to J U***n £25.00

 

So from the extract provided, it does look like the original SO set up in 2011, was therefore cancelled and a new one setup. My dad only had 1 SO ever setup.

 

So that only leaves the theory UncleB has said. In that case, shall I contact the council and ask what their procedure is when a change of bank account happens and the leaseholder does not change to new account? Or shall I request a SAR to the council asking for information relating to change of account around Aug 2016? Because, if my dad ha not changed the SO details to new account, payments were still being made at around that time anyway, and I had a look at his statements prior and during Aug 2016, no payments had bounced. So it leaves me to think the council also requested a change of bank details but did not allocate a reference.

 

This ofcourse will change a lot in terms of who to go after, if Lloyds only did what they were asked to do. And the bank senior manager today also confirmed, they would not change an SO without the account holders consent etc.

 

Let me know what I ought to do.

Thanks,

 

Jay

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This is great. Well done. Maybe now getting somewhere.

 

Can I now suggest that you go and cancel a standing order . Then after two or three days start another one and see if the number series continues or whether the number of the vacated one is then reallocated.

 

From the print out that you have, it suggests that once the number is used, it is not reallocated. However you may as well try. I suggest that you cancel standing order 003 and then a day or so later set up another one and see whether it becomes 005. If it does become arrow five and number three is vacant then I think that this is very compelling evidence in your favour.

 

Then I think you need to look carefully at the results of the subject access disclosures from the bank and also from the council. I think also we need to work out an FOIA request to the council.

 

I know it's all a nuisance but if these steps can be taken very carefully with great consideration, I think eventually you will produce an unassailable argument. You never know, it may exactly be as UB has suggested and maybe the councils SAR/FOIA requests will produce precisely the evidence that you need.

 

If we can build up a sufficient case then we can start to consider what action to take. I certainly think that you need to reject the findings of the FOS and in fact make a complaint about the careless handling of the complaint. When is the deadline for responding to it? In order to buy yourself as much time as possible I suggest that you wait until three or four days before that deadline then put in your complaint about the FOS handling and say that you want the time for responding to be extended until you have answers because your confidence in their procedure is undermined.

 

With a bit of luck, the SAR and also the FOIA request will be satisfied well before and we will understand exactly the situation. An FOIA request takes 20 days to satisfy so if you get that off on Tuesday, they won't be long to wait. The SARs take 30 days. Have you sent them off yet?

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Hi BF

 

I will ask my father to go into branch on Wednesday and have them both cancelled and set up new ones, and see what results that produces.

 

In terms of the council SAR - what shall I ask for? All information relating to a payee bank account change during/around Aug 2016?

As for FOIA - ask the council what happens when a leaseholder does not change his/her pay instructions to new bank account details, how is that handled by the council?

 

And for the bank SAR - do I ask for information relating to a request made by the council to Lloyds to change bank account details? If they have this, this in turn will show whether the council requested a reference to be put on payment reference - is that correct?

 

FoS deadline is June 7th to respond. I have replied back saying I need more time to respond fully as I am awaiting to gather further evidence to help my case.

 

I have not sent the SAR requests yet, but will be ready to do so come Tuesday morning. I just wanted to be sure what I am requesting with everyone's help on here.

 

Thank you,

Jay

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No! only one. Cancel 003. Leave the others alone

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Are you telling me that after all this advice you haven't even sent the SARs off yet? I thought the idea was to get it sorted as quickly as possible on the 25th

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Based on the discussion on this thread, I think you should ask them:

 

Does the council have a policy in respect of council tax payments which appear to arrive without any reference number or any recognisable reference number?

How are such payments handled?

Does the Council ever make adjustments to the receiving accounts of council tax standing orders which require that a council tax payer's bank needs to be informed so that a reference number or some other indication of destination needs to be adjusted by the bank?

Does the council in such cases ever deal with the council tax payer's bank directly when such adjustments need to be made?

 

Maybe UB can have a look at these and see if he feels that this is sufficient or there needs to be some modification. I have tried to keep the questions fairly general at the moment. You can then go back and ask specific questions depending on the general answers you get.

 

Hopefully UB will come along soon – but if not then send this off on Tuesday as an FOIA request. You can do this by email. There will be an email address on the council's webpage

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Okay that's great. We'll see what it turns up. If UB comes along and has any suggestions to make then you can submit further FOIA requests

 

I have a feeling that we are starting to make some progress here.

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Of course – we are left with another problem and that is that it appears that the standing order carry reference, then didn't, then did, then didn't et cetera. Does your theory answer this conundrum?

 

I suppose one could also FOIA the council to discover how they deal with payments which don't appear to carry a reference. I suppose we could even ask how many of these they receive a year

 

The standing order is manually set up by the Bank and they type in the reference number for the creditor receiving the payments. When Lloyds cancelled the first SO and then issued another SO with the different creditor bank details they failed to add the creditor reference number.

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Yes, but I think that this happened three times

 

The bank claim to have no idea as to how the standing order was changed and have in fact suggested that

 

  • you must've visited the bank, cancelled the standing order and then set it up again but without reference.
  • Then you visited the bank again, cancelled the standing order and then set up again but this time with a reference.
  • Then you visited the bank again, cancelled the standing order and then set up without a reference.
  • Then finally in January of this year, you visited the bank and added the reference.

The bank say that it has nothing to do with them – but as a gesture of utter generosity and astonishing goodwill, they offered you £500 – basically to go away and shut up – and very sensibly you told them to go and do the other thing

 

https://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?486449-Lloyds-bank-%96-phantom-changes-to-standing-order-reference-leading-to-local-council-CCJ&p=5112874&viewfull=1#post5112874

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