Advice needed - lodged irish cheques into Uk account

clutterbuster

Hey
I was wondering if anybody has been in similar situation or would know what to do for the best here.....basically my hubby and I bank with a bank in NI (Ulster Bank) and we have credit cards and a personal loan with them. We are currently seeing CAB and the adviser has written off to the bank and our other creditors explaining why we have fallen behind and asked them for a DMP (we have had no reply yet from them but CAB says to allow 6 weeks for a response).

My hubby works in ROI and gets paid by cheque each week (therefore the cheque is in Euros not Sterling) and so he lodges it each week into the bank and the money is available immediately even though it has not technically cleared. Now though a few people have put the heeby jeebies into us and informed us correctly or incorrectly I do not know that if we owe a bank money then they have the "right" to take any money off us as soon as it is lodged into our account. Is this correct even though our account is not overdrawn and we haven't technically actually fallen behind with any payments as yet? The CAB said to open a new account with a bank we owe nothing to which we did but here is the problem.....I lodged his cheque last Friday into the new account and it still has not cleared, the cashier said it may take 2 weeks to clear into our account, the helpline number told me beforehand it would only take 5 days so that is why I lodged it (Bank of Ireland). I contacted CAB and they said there was not much we could do, we either lodge the money into our UB account and risk it being "taken" or lodge it into BOI account and wait 2-4 weeks til it clears!! This is ridiculous as we have the mortgage etc to pay and if it takes 2-4 weeks for one cheque to clear then how pray tell are we supposed to have access to our money???

I'm sure there are many people who work in ROI and live in NI or GB so surely there has to be a quicker way of getting your wages than this? The employer pays everyone by cheque although some of the staff reside in ROI so they can just lodge their cheque into their ROI account and it clears pretty quick. What do we do?? He is getting his pay today and we haven't even got his pay from last week cleared yet so how do we pay bills on time like this?? Plus I get paid 4 weekly and I only do part time so its not enough to cover big bills til hubby's cheques clear. Tempted to put the cheque into UB account as the money is accessible straight away but am scared that they might not allow us to take any money out or pay any bills via online banking!?!?!?! Dilemma!!

Advice please, apologies if there is already an existing thread similar to this but I didn't see one.

Clutterbuster