Statute barred debts and the Limitation Acts

crazyposhgal

Thank you, will give them a call Monday.

I too hope they paid a lot lol.

graemo

Does anybody who knows think this letter is ok for the change of address thing?

Thank you for your letter of 24th January, and the somewhat idiosyncratic interpretation of the law contained within.

You state in your letter that you consider that my alleged deliberate concealment of address amounts to “deliberate concealment of facts relevant to your right of action” in the case of my supposed debt to your company. Should you attempt to take legal action to collect any monies from me on this basis I will vigorously contest for the following reasons:

1. I have never deliberately concealed my address, and should you claim I have done so in court the burden of proof will fall upon you. Further you will be required to prove you could not reasonably have ascertained my whereabouts at any point in the 6 years of the relevant period. (Paragon Finance v Thakerar 1999)

2. Legal precedent has established that even in the case of deliberate concealment of address, such concealment is not considered a “fact relevant to your right of action”. (Lowsley v Forbes 1999).

For the above reasons I continue to assert that the matter about which you are contacting me would be statute barred, even if it were genuinely related to myself. Therefore I will be making no payment.
If you wish to enter into any further correspondence on this matter I require you to send my a copy of your complaints procedure, in order for me to make a complaint to the Financial Ombudsman. Furthermore, please note that any response other than confirmation you will not be contacting me again may be forwarded to the ombudsman, along with the contents of your last letter.

richieduke

Hello Forumites,

I completed my IVA in 2012 and all defaults were removed from my credit files in 2013. Amongst my previous debts was a £25,000 debt to HFC Bank Ltd (made up of £15,000 debt and £10,000 insurance).I received my IVA certificate of completion from the High Courts.

2 weeks ago I got an alert that a search was done on my credit file by Lowell Finance.

Last week I got a letter from Lowell and HSBC (owners of HFC Bank) in the same envelope stating that the debt of £12,000 had been sold on to Lowell by HSBC.

HFC had received their monthly payments during my 5 year IVA tenure which has been settled in 2012. What right do Lowell have to hound me for an IVA settled debt? Do I engage with Lowell or ignore them? Any letter templates? Is my debt which defaulted in 2007 also statute barred?
Thanks

ssdd81

Hi All, new to this so sorry if I am not following etiquette by posting on here...
I found the statute barred letter on this thread and sent it to a DCA chasing a debt over 7 year old. Today I got a letter with apologies for any distress caused, and the case was now closed! RESULT!!! firstly thank you to all for posting advice which I have followed and for the resources! but...
I checked a credit report tonight and there is still a string of default notices on my record. Should they remove these automatically as they have admitted there is no grounds to chase the alleged debt? My thoughts were to send a (polite) letter requesting this to be done immediately. any advice would be most welcome....
thanks

fatbelly

ssdd81 wrote: »

Hi All, new to this so sorry if I am not following etiquette by posting on here...
I found the statute barred letter on this thread and sent it to a DCA chasing a debt over 7 year old. Today I got a letter with apologies for any distress caused, and the case was now closed! RESULT!!! firstly thank you to all for posting advice which I have followed and for the resources! but...
I checked a credit report tonight and there is still a string of default notices on my record. Should they remove these automatically as they have admitted there is no grounds to chase the alleged debt? My thoughts were to send a (polite) letter requesting this to be done immediately. any advice would be most welcome....
thanks

It's unlikely that they would remove a default if it is accurate. It is automatically removed after 6 years.

However, you now have their agreement about when you made the last payment, and they should have registered a default 3-6 months from then, under ico guidance

http://ico.org.uk/~/media/documents/library/data_protection/detailed_specialist_guides/default_tgn_version_v3%20%20doc.ashx

So with a last payment 7 years ago the default should have been registered at least 6.5 years ago and should no longer show.

Polite letter is good. But you need to be precise in your wording.

fatbelly

richieduke wrote: »

What right do Lowell have to hound me for an IVA settled debt? Do I engage with Lowell or ignore them? Any letter templates? Is my debt which defaulted in 2007 also statute barred?
Thanks

They have no right to demand payment. Wait till they do, then just tell them the facts.

ssdd81

Hi Fatbelly,

Thanks for the quck response. i was thinking something like the following:

Dear Sirs,


Thank you for your recent letter dated 3rd February 2014. Further to you confirmation that the matter is now closed, I request that all trace of default notices on any credit history in my name relating to *company name* be removed immediately. No credit agreement or payment has taken place between myself and your company, and there were no formal notices from yourselves at any point during correspondence to state that default notices were being put against my name.

Should you fail to address these erroneous default notes then a complaint will be made to the Financial Services Ombudsman and the OFT without further notice.

I await your written confirmation that these will be removed and that this matter is now closed.

Yours faithfully


What are your thoughts?

fatbelly

ssdd81 wrote: »

Hi Fatbelly,

Thanks for the quck response. i was thinking something like the following:

Dear Sirs,


Thank you for your recent letter dated 3rd February 2014. Further to you confirmation that the matter is now closed, I request that all trace of default notices on any credit history in my name relating to *company name* be removed immediately. No credit agreement or payment has taken place between myself and your company, and there were no formal notices from yourselves at any point during correspondence to state that default notices were being put against my name.

Should you fail to address these erroneous default notes then a complaint will be made to the Financial Services Ombudsman and the OFT without further notice.

I await your written confirmation that these will be removed and that this matter is now closed.

Yours faithfully


What are your thoughts?

If this is your debt, but it's statute barred, then you need to look at your credit files to see what is on there.

If the actual entry of a default is false (i.e. it must have been earlier) then you can refer to the individual entry, quote the date, and argue that it should be removed.

I doubt that a global ' all trace of default notices on any credit history in my name' be removed because 'the matter is now closed' will do it.

If it's your debt but statute barred then is it true that 'No credit agreement or payment has taken place between myself and your company'?

Or was your argument that this wasn't your debt at all (in which case why did you send an SB letter?)

It's not strictly necessary for them to send a notice of default, so I'm not sure you can argue this as a general point. What if they can show that they did send one?

The ICO say

It may not be necessary to serve a notice on all occasions. We accept there are cases when there should be no doubt over a default

ssdd81

the debt was statute barred from end of 2012, there was some back and forth with requests from me to DCA to prove any debt to them, then i found the SB letter template and sent that. then i got the response that the case with them was closed. if the debt became SB'd end of 2012, then surely there should not be default notices after that date??

fermi

I think you should really be arguing that the default date is inaccurate, and as such they are breaching the DPA for recording inaccurate information.

If the debt is statute barred, then under no circumstances should a default have been recorded more than 6 months after the cause of action and quite possibly should have been before then depending on payment history.

So if statute barred end of 2012, then no way should a default have been registered with a default date later than the middle of 2007. A default in 2007 would have been removed from your report by now.