Debt relief orders

TRACEY6101

Hello this is my first post on here, hope its in the right place.

I currently, well its being cancelled now but had a DMP with CCCS and i was struggling to make the payments as twice now my income has come down. I sent budgeting letters to each creditor and one got in touch with me and suggested i visited CAB.

I am now currently applying for a DRO. I have been made aware of all the pitfalls and upsides of this and im happy to go ahead that is till this morning.

I called the CCCS and informed them of what was happening and to say the least the woman i spoke to wasnt very understanding of my situation, but then said she doesnt think i would be approved because of my age and working life left. Now i dont know if this is right.

I qualify for the DRO i have completed the forms and had £50 or less, debts under £15k, have no assets over £300 etc .

I cant see as im 28 why this would make a difference? I am a single parent and a few years back wasnt in this position. My daughter wont be starting school for over a year yet. So if i started work the cost implications and benefit losses i'd still be in the same boat.

Does anyone maybe in a similar position have one or know if there is any truth in this?

Thanks Tracey

fermi

Has no bearing on the application whatsoever.

Sounds like you spoke to someone who has their own issues, and is allowing that to colour their advice

fermi

I should add that we also have some CCCS councillors who post on this board.

I've PM'd them to bring this to their attention.

TRACEY6101

Thanks Fermi.

I did wonder if this was true, My advisor at CAB isnt in today and ive been worrying sick since speaking with the CCCS. She did seem a little off with me and told me ''it was my own doing getting into this mess.'' Then hung up!! Which i know due to unforeseen circumstances but i didn't expect to be told that from them.

Fingers crossed it all goes through ive been trying to pay off my debts for over a year now and struggling at the same time as i wanted to pay everyone in full as soon as i could but i just can not carry on like this!

Do you know if the DRO have a good approval rate??

Tracey

philnicandamy

Hmm the training at cccs of late seems to be lacking somewhere.....

DRO approval rate? not heard of anyone be refused here as yet..and thats since the scheme started in April 09

debt_doctor

TRACEY6101 wrote: »

I called the CCCS and informed them of what was happening and to say the least the woman i spoke to wasnt very understanding of my situation, but then said she doesnt think i would be approved because of my age and working life left. Now i dont know if this is right

Hi,

I am an authorised DRO intermediary, and I assure you that such a statement is utter rubbish !

DD

debt_doctor

Hi,

Our office has done about 70 DRO's, out of that all but two were approved. One was not approved because a £250 unknown debt on their experian report put them over the 15k threshold, ( experian is always checked so get your report and see if it is correct, it was an error by o2 in this clients case but client still lost £90 and had to pay again)

Second refusal was someone who had a pension fund they were unaware of.

If you meet the criteria your DRO will be approved.

DD

fermi

Thanks DD.

TRACEY6101

Thanks DD i was thinking of doing a credit report myself. As for a pension im sure i dont have one, do you know how i can find out? or will that be on the report too?

Tracey

Tinytim

Hi Tracey,

Pension schemes will not show up on your credit report. You will know whether you have ever paid into a pension personally, and if you haven't, that means you will not have a personal pension or a contributory company pension. There is always the possibility that you have deferred benefits in a non-contributory company pension, but if this is the case, the Trustees of the pension should still have provided you with some paperwork soon after you left service. In the vast majority of cases, non-contributory pension schemes were only offered by very large corporations such as banks, so if you have evey worked for someone like this it might be best to ring them just to check.

The only other type of pension could possibly be a personal pension that was used solely to contract out of the State Earnings Related Pension Scheme (SERPS). This was quite popular in times past, and for simply filling in a form, a small part of your National Insurance contributions (and those of your employer) would be redirected to a personal pension account but with stricter rules. It is easy for people to forget these, as once the form is signed these tend to continue in the background - although you should still receive annual statements, but house moves etc can mean these sometimes never arrive. As these schemes were intended to replace the benefits of a stste sponsored scheme, I am not sure they would be counted anyway, but perhaps someone else has a definitive answer

TRACEY6101

I remember i worked for sainsburys in 2000 and they had a pension scheme and i left about 6 months after and would never of paid anymore into it. And im sure i was told it would of been cancelled if no funds were received after 1 year.
If you have a pension is there a limit as if i did pay anything into this it would of been about £100 max.
How do they find out if you have one? sorry for all the questions!