Is this Halifax CC agreement legal?

GeorgeUK

Hi Pentax

I'm going to try to explain it properly this time

The Consumer Credit (Cancellation Notices and Copies of Documents) Regulations 1983 states

3 General requirements as to form and content of copy documents
(1) Subject to the following provisions of these Regulations, every copy of an executed agreement, security instrument or other document referred to in the Act and delivered or sent to a debtor, hirer or surety under any provision of the Act shall be a true copy thereof.
(2) There may be omitted from any such copy--
(a) any information included in an executed agreement, security instrument or other document relating to the debtor, hirer or surety or included for the use of the creditor or owner only which is not required to be included therein by the Act or any Regulations thereunder as to the form and content of the document of which it is a copy;
(b) any signature box, signature or date of signature (other than, in the case of a copy of a cancellable executed agreement delivered to the debtor under section 63(1) of the Act, the date of the signature by the debtor of an agreement to which section 68(b) of the Act applies);

(The Act being reffered to is the Consumer Credit Act 1974)

This means that if you request a copy of the agreement under section 77/78 of the CCA74, a signature is not required. Any other copy you were sent (if the letter from 2003 was a copy of the agreement) should have the signature. You are usually provided with 2 forms, one is your own copy of the agreement to fill in and the 2nd is the one you send back to the bank after signing. This is what they should have sent back to you. There have been cases in the past where an application form is said to have been a copy of the agreement but as it would not have all the prescribed terms on it would not be considered to be executed properly and therefore unenforcable.

CCA74 states:

61.—(1) A regulated agreement is not properly executed unless
(a) a document in the prescribed form itself containing all the prescribed terms and conforming to regulations under section 60(1) is signed in the prescribed manner both by the debtor or hirer and by or on behalf of the creditor or owner, and
(b) the document embodies all the terms of the agreement, other than implied terms, and
(c) the document is, when presented or sent to the debtor or hirer for signature, in such a state that all its terms are readily legible.

Part (a) states that the agreement should be in the prescribed form as well as having the prescribed terms. This means that the document you signed should have had the terms in it; not another document/letter. The letter they have sent does not ask for your signature and appears to be merely for information purposes. For the agreement to be properly executed, the original should have had the credit limit, APR, repayment arrangements and your signature on the one document/sheet. Having your signature on one document and the terms on another is of no use.

It may be that the only way you can see if they have any other documentation is to send a SAR, but from what they have provided to date, i would not say that this is an executed agreement.