HSBC litigation?

[Will Goodfellow]

17 hours ago, Shah57 said:

There was no going forward income as the 1st lockdown came 6 weeks later and I went straight onto universal credit after that and have been on it ever since. 

 

Bottom line, at the time it was the only account I had add and all of my savings of £16500 were in there which I had no access to after it was blocked.

 

15 hours ago, Shah57 said:

 I could go directly to court and as I'm on Universal Credit I'm exempt from any fees. 

 

If you had £16500 of savings, you weren't entitled to universal credit as your were over the £16,000 capital limit. Did you not declare your £16,500 of savings to the DWP?

[Shah57]

No as I had no access to them.

 

Well I needed to support myself somehow.  I will declare those savings on Monday though

[Will Goodfellow]

It doesn't matter whether or not you could access the money, the fact that you didn't declare it is potentially fraudulent so you're at risk of prosecution or at least a large benefit overpayment which you'll have to repay. You should inform the DWP about your savings to prevent any future issues arising.

[fkofilee]

@Will Goodfellow

 

In exceptional circumstances, like the OPs, there shouldn't be any problems. 

 

The savings of £16k were not accesible I would imagine as the account was frozen etc 

[Will Goodfellow]

There will be an overpayment of universal credit which will need to be paid back, it's unlilkely to result in a prosecution.

[fkofilee]

Yes - Possibly as the access to the £16k of savings etc was restored after so long. 

But its unlikely if HSBC can provide a letter of culpability for the issue. 

[Will Goodfellow]

I doubt the DWP will care much that the bank account was frozen, the fact is that Shah57 wasn't eligible to receive UC and failed to even mention the £16,500 plus another £1000 in compensation, £17,500. And still didn't notify the DWP once the savings were accessible. The DWP is not going to just ignore that fact and decide to pay UC where a person is over the capital limit. People would be stashing money in accounts and getting the accounts locked by the bank for fraudulent activity in order to keep the capital and claim benefits at the same time. It's not going to happen.

[Shah57]

But there were exceptional circumstance involved, they must count for something 

[BankFodder]

You've been advised to send an SAR.  Have you done that?

[BankFodder]

I understand also that you receive £1000 from the bank by way of some kind of apology. Did you accept this £1000? On what basis was it paid to you? Was it paid in full settlement? Did you accept it on that basis? Please could you post the letter which accompanied the payment or which gave you the notice of the payment

[Shah57]

Not done it yet

 

They just deposited 1000 to my account so I assumed it was a way of saying sorry .  I did ask for more but they said no