CCJs outstanding against the Banks - Investigation

[Amethyst]

OUTSTANDING CCJS
These figures are County Court Judgements against the main Banks that have not been marked as satisfied.

These figures are as at November 2007

UNSATISFIED COUNTRY COURT JUDGEMENTS AGAINST

Lloyds £1,256,966
Abbey £255,436
BARCLAYS £767,456
BOS £34,407
HBOS £51,161
HSBC £133,492
Yorkshire Bank £25,732
Clydesdale £18,337
Royal Bank Of Scotland £87,864
Natwest £222,256
Nationwide £18,159
Northern Rock £264


BarclaysPlc_May08_Beagles

Clydesdale_May08_Beagles

HalifaxPlc_May08_Beagles

HBOS_May008_Beagles

HSBC_May08_Beagles

RoyalBankofScotland_May08_Beagles

BankoScotland_May08_Beagles

Lloyds_May08_Beagles Nationwide Reply Page 1

Natwest_May08_Beagles

YorkshireBank_May08_Beagles



The Team at Beagles have been looking into the Consumer Credit Licence renewals for the main banks. We have been looking at this and all the whys and wherefores since october...other things kept getting in the way but finally we seem to have some decent results to look at, and think about the way forward and any implications.

We have purchased details of unsatisfied County Court Judgements and Decrees currently shown as outstanding against the main Banks and lenders in order to highlight a failing in the application for a Credit Licence.

This should hopefully influence the Banks into settling those outstanding CCJs.


In applying for renewal of a Consumer Credit Licence this question is asked;

''
Q20 of 24. Has your organisation, or has any individual or organisation we have asked you to tell us about on this form:

• had a county court judgment made against them in the last five years
• been a member of a limited liability partnership that has had a county court judgment made against it in the last five years
• been a director, company secretary or controller of a company that has had a county court judgment made against it in the last five years?''

Further information can be found :-

• Applying to be licensed
• Businesses requiring a licence
• Standard licence fees
• Application forms
• Group licences
• Online services
• Licence procedure
• Group licence holders
• Consumer credit jurisdiction industry levy

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RESULTS of Registry Trust Searches November 2007

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Re: Registry Trust Search Results

Registry Trust Search Results November 2007 for

Lloyds.....the worst offenders

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Re: Registry Trust Search Results

Regsitry Trust Search Results November 2007 for;.

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reserved

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Re: Registry Trust Search Results

We wrote to the CEO of each of the Banks searched with similar letters and the following questions;

Lord Terence Burns Chairman
Abbey National PLC
Abbey National House
2 Triton Square
Regent's Place
London NW1

Dear Lord Burns,

I am writing to you, as part of the Administration Team at the rapidly growing Legal Beagles Consumer Group, to request information about your banks current position with regards to adverse County Court Judgements and your recent application for renewal of your Consumer Credit License.

You will be aware it is a requirement of the Consumer Credit Licensing Bureau to fully answer the following question as part of your application;

“Has your organisation had a county court judgment made against them in the last five years “ You will also be aware that providing such false information, or withholding information requested by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), or misleading the OFT, can all have a significant impact on the OFT's assessment of your fitness to be licensed.

To this end I put the following questions to you;

1) Are you, your shareholders and investors aware that Abbey National PLC have over 95 County Court Judgements, totalling approximately £255,000, currently listed with the Registry Trust as unsatisfied against them?


2) How many of these County Court Judgements did the Bank declare when applying to renew their Consumer Credit License?


3) As the required standard of fitness to hold a Consumer Credit License must be maintained throughout the life of the License has Abbey National PLC declared subsequent CCJs as and when they have arisen? 4) Are HM Treasury, HMCS, OFT, FSA, CCLB, BBA, BCSB, your shareholders and investors aware that Abbey National PLC is failing to satisfy Judgement Debts amounting to over £¼ million? 5) What actions do you propose to rectify this blatant breach and total disregard of Court Procedure?


I am assuming this must be just one of the “More ideas for your money”

In order to assist you in giving a full and timely response to my queries, please find enclosed a list, supplied to our Consumer Group by the Registry Trust, of County Court Judgements currently registered against Abbey National PLC.

As I believe this matter to be of great media and public interest, especially in the current climate, I would ask you to at least acknowledge this correspondence by return or at the latest within the next ten days, indicating your intentions to my request.


Yours Sincerely

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These are the Replys received.



NATIONWIDE ( main points - see full letter attached below)

2: Nationwide renews its Licence every five years. The Licence is due to be renewed in October 2009. Any CCJs showing at that date will be declared.

3: Every years, Nationwide informs the Office of Fair trading (OFT) of the number and date of any CCJ's registered against it, according to Registry Trust Ltd. The Last update was provided to the OFT by Nationwide on 19 March 2007.

5: The Legal and Compliance Department regularly reviews the Land Regsitry trust and dunn and Bradstreet reports to enure any CCJs that have been registered are either satisfied or removed. This is not a breach or disregard of Court Procedure.

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More replys



ABBEY (see below for attached letter)

It is not clear what direct interest you may have in these matters, since as far as I am aware you are not a customer of Abbey nor do you represent or purport to represent anyone with a direct interest in the matters raised. therefore you are not entitled to any information and I am bound to conclue from the tone of your letter and the veiled threats therein that your request is motivated by other reasons.

Nevertheless I would make the following observations:

:::::Abbey would not, and it does not, delibarately either breach or disregard Court procedure. I am sure that you would agree that it serves no purpose at all for us intentionally to allow default judgements to be entered. It has been my experience that against the background of very high volumes of claims being issued in the County couurts, many Claim forms simply are not received at all or at least not in time to avoid default judgement.

:::::The result is that on occassion default judgements, by accident rather than by design, are entered against the Abbey. Upon becoming aware of any such Judgement we immediately take steps to either have it set aside or to satisfy it.

::::: I am also aware the CCJ records are not very often up-to-date and indeed on occassion have been found to be inaccurate. For instance, and with regards to your list, my inquiries reveal that with the exception of a handful of judgements totalling in value less than £10,000 (which are currently being addressed) all of the CCJs listed have been either satisfied or set aside. This information clearly puts an etirely different persepctive on your assertions.

::::: You are also, with respect mistaken as to your assertions concerning Abbeys consumer credit licence. Firstly there has been no recent application by Abbey for renewal of its licence. Secondly, Guidance to licence holders issued by the OFT in January 2008 makes no mention of any obligation to report CCJs; moreover, legislation (in the Consumer Credits Acts of 1974 and 2006) imposes no such obligation as you allege.

HBOS

In relation to the CCJs identified in your letter.....I can ssure you that in many cases these have been either set aside or satisfied or that work is ongoing to deal with them.

Please also not ethat some of the CCJs identified in your letter relate to claims that were bought by customers in connection with unarranged overdraft charges. As you will no doubt be aware, such claims have been stayed pending the outcome of the ongoing test case in the High Court. Where this is the case, no action has been taken in relation to the connected CCJs nor will any further action be taken until the test case has been resolved

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Re: Registry Trust Search Results

Second response from Lloyds TSB. two weeks , a highly paid , highly skilled legal team employed by a billion pound industry to come up with

"I`m not telling.........it`s a secret.so nerrrrrrr"

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More Replies;



Extracts from BARCLAYS

::::: You may be aware that the banking sector has been subject to a very high volume of County Court claims over the past two years, with customers claiming back unauthorised overdraft charges levied on their accounts. Barclays is no exception.


::::The sharp rise in County court claims has led to an increase in incidences of judgements in default (claimants entering judgement where no defence appears to have been entered by the defendant) I confirm that with the exception of a small number of claims, all of the judgements contained on the Registry Trust List are judgements in default arising out of overdraft charges claims.

::::There are a number of reasons why a court may record the defendant as not having filed a defence. W
Whilst I am not prepared to discuss details with you I can confirm that by far the most common reason for judgements in default being entered against Barclays is where the bank has not received the claim form within the prescribed period. the cause of this is in many cases down to the Court and the postal system. We are aware, however, that claimants are being advised by consumer websites to serve documents on remote branches (taking advantage of the change in service rules under the Civil Procedure Rules which now permit service on any office rather than the Registered Office) this can result in further delays whilst docusments are supplied bybranches to the Banks' legal function. Clearly such occasions may be suitable for applications to set aside the judgement. It is for these reasons that, over the past two years, the banking sector has seen a marked uplife in judgements in default. This is not however an indication of a marked increase in risk and does not justify your critscms or concerns.

::::: As to the accuracy of the Regsitry Trust List;

b:it contains claims which have be set aside or satisfied. The vast majority (in excess fo 95% of the total) have been disposed of in this way.

c: there is a small number (7) which have yet to be disposed of where an application to set aside is pending. These will continue to appear as unsatisfied on the regsitry trusts database until the court has heard the application and processed the resultant order.

d: There is a further reason for the discrepancy between the numbers on your list and the true position. Many claimants acting wihtout legal advice have failed to inform the Court that the claim has been satisfied. It is the obligation of the Claimant to inform the court of this and in the absence of that confirmation. Courts are unwilling to record the judgement as satisfied or set aside. Whilst many claimants do comply with their obligations and do inform the court where required, others do not and consequently the judgements continue to be recorded as satisfied even though that is not the case.

The fact that these judgement continue to be recorded as unsatisfied is of great concern to us and we are in contact with both the Claimants and the courts to rectify this. We will be writing seperately to the Registry Trust to express our conerns at the accuracy of their list and reliance by third parties on its contents.

:::: On the basis however that the vast majority of the judgements on the list have either been set aside or have been satisfied, your criticsms and queires are not relevant to the issue of our fitness to hold a consumer credit licence as you asert in your letter, and I do not propose to address the points you make on this subject in any further details. Nor do I consider it appropriate to engage with you on issues relating to the Banks communications with Shareholders and investors, or our communications with the Consumer Credit Licenecing Bureau. For the avoidance of doubt however I confirm that we have not provided any false or misleading information while applying for the licence whether alledged in your letter or at all.

NAB (Clydesdale Bank)

::::: For all but 2 of the English cases, the Bank has been involved in procedures to have the matters set aside or reversed. In this regard these matters are all bank charges claims and i understand the fact that most have in fact been set aside or are awaiting court confirmation of the same.

::::According to our records the Bank did not declare these CCJs at the time of last renewal of its Consumer Credit Licence. there is no case for saying the Bank has either knowingly or unknowingly failed to make full disclosure.

:::: The Bank denies it is in breach and disregards of court proecdures.

[Amethyst]

Following these responses we recently carried out further searches on each of the banks.

The results were largely the same with the exception of a very few had been registered as satisfied.

There were also more entered onto the Register dated after our initial searches in November.


Additional figures are as follows (entries between 07 June 07 to 03 March 08)

Abbey.....An additional 6 entries totalling £23743

Barclays....An additional 16 entries totalling £42103

Clydesdale/Yorkshire....An additional 1 entries totalling £1004

HBOS....No new entries other than Halifax Bank Plc which was omitted from the original searches .Halifax Bank PLC 455 Unsatisfied CCJs from 02/04/02 to 11/07/07 Totaling a value of £816032

HSBC....An additional 11 entries totalling £30619

Lloyds TSB....An additional 245 entries ! - £610,209 !!!!

Nationwide....No new entries

RBS(Namely Natwest)....An additional 10 entries totalling £64861




Attached are the recent searches accidentally omitted from the original search of HBOS as we didn`t realise a separate search would be needed to cover Halifax Bank PLC. Also attached are the additional entries since our original search for Lloyds TSB Bank PLC. The totals will be added to the above shortly.

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Re: CCJs outstanding against the Banks - Investigation

We would also like to ask our members and guests from any other forum to cross reference any of the claim numbers shown on the Registry Trust scans. If any claim you have made appears on the list then please let us know at what stage your claim is ie.

Satisfied
Unsatisfied
Stayed/Set aside

Thank you for your support in this your help is very much appreciated and may be of great importance.

Jules

[Amethyst]

Re: CCJs outstanding against the Banks - Investigation

Just wondering if the actual applications for credit licences would be available somehow. That would be interesting.

[EXC]

Re: CCJs outstanding against the Banks - Investigation

No, I asked the OFT that.

[Amethyst]

Re: CCJs outstanding against the Banks - Investigation

Lloyds Unsatisfied CCJs from 06/07/07 to 03/03/08 Total £610,209.00

Total Outstanding CCJs against Lloyd Bank Plc is £1,867,175.00