Help with Charging Order

simmian

Hello all,

Please be gentle with me because its been a rough week. I recently went through the process of remortgaging for home improvements. The overall process has taken near 3 months. A couple of days ago I got an email from the solicitors that where dealing with the remortgage informing me that they had found some entries on the land registry. This is like double dutch to me because I am not that familiar with these terms. Anyway I investigated and found that aside from my mortgage there was 2 Equitable charges created by an interim charging order from Cardiff CC in Jan 2008 in favour of Asset Link Capital Ltd and another interim charging order of the St Helens CC from April 2008 in favour of HSBC. I had no recollection of what these related too. Around the time I lost my job, and was out of work for around 3-4 months and fell in a state of depression and moved around 3-4 properties. Parents/Sisters/friends it was complicated to say the least. Anyway I got myself back on my feet and got a new job and it was onwards and upwards. I managed to keep my payments up on my mortgage but fell behind with other payments loans etc.. Fast forward to now and I do admit that I do bury my head in the sand at times, but I have not had a loan for 7 years or so. Slowly but surely my credit rating improved. I had a couple of CCJ's on my credit file from around the time that I lost my job but they have since disappeared. Having found out about these land charges I decided to investigate further but this is a struggle. I contacted the land registry and they could not tell me what was owed or why it was owed. They told me to contact the courts. I managed to speak to St Helens CC and they informed that one of the land chargers was in the region of 13K. I felt like crying for the life of I could not remember getting a loan with HSBC. They told me that the judgement was based on unauthorised overdraft fees!! I was stunned! I used to bank with First Direct which I believe are part of HSBC, correct me if I am wrong. I am gutted and could do with some help if possible how can it that unauthorised overdraft fees get to 13K any advice on what to do next would be much appreciated as I want his removed from my property. I thought that a land charge would only apply to a secured loan?

sourcrates

Hi,

Unfortunately a creditor can apply for a charging order after obtaining a CCJ against you, if the CCJ was obtained before the 1st October 2012, which in your case it was, you would of had to have been behind in your payments to the CCJ.

You would of had paperwork to that effect.

Stepchange or national debtline are two places to get advice from :

https://www.stepchange.org/debt-info/debt-collection/charging-orders-and-my-home.aspx

simmian

The problem with my paperwork is that I moved in lots of locations so didn't get paperwork, but that's in the past. My main question I suppose would I be able to anything about the excessive bank charges? Are these what people claim back?

Karonher

Its hard to say if they are excessive without knowing how big the overdraft was and how long you were in it. Some of that £13,000 will be the actual overdraft not charges. Some banks are charging between £80 and £100 a month in interest. Also, did you have any DDs or SOs that bounced and incurred a fee?

It is a lot of money, but if it has built up over a long period of time, it may not be seen as excessive. You explain about the issues you had at the time, but if the bank did not know, they could not help.

fatbelly

Did you manage to remortgage OK?

The charging orders shouldn't really affect anything, all this would have dropped off your credit report, orders for sale are near impossible and the COs just sit there until you decide to sell up.

sourcrates

simmian wrote: »

My main question I suppose would I be able to anything about the excessive bank charges? Are these what people claim back?

It sounds like a lot just for bank charges, but as we don't yet know the full story, its mostly guesswork.

There are two ways to find out how this debt breaks down, you could write a formal letter of complaint to your old bank asking them for a complete breakdown of how this debt was accrued, ask them to list the charges in date order, so you know what was charged and when.

If they are unwilling to do that (as they have sold on the debt and legal action has been taken) you would have to resort to a SAR (subject access request) this costs £10 and is an official request under the data protection act, but it will get you all the information the bank holds on you.

Try the free complaint route first, then resort to a SAR if need be.

You will need all this information if you ever want to see any of that money back again.
If you can show you were in financial difficulty at the time, it may be possible to recover some of the money.

simmian

Thanks Sourcrates thats great advice in all honesty I dont expect or dont really care if I was entitled to compensation as I am sure they would find a way out of it. My main objective now is to get the charging order removed and if I have to pay some sort of fee back so be it but what sickens me is that if it is bank chargers then I am disgusted. I am going to write to St Helens Court to begin with to see if they can provide me with further information and following that I will contact HSBC. The frustrating thing is that I am certain that I closed my bank account with First Direct due to their excessive chargers and I moved houses at the time

sourcrates

simmian wrote: »

Thanks Sourcrates thats great advice in all honesty I dont expect or dont really care if I was entitled to compensation as I am sure they would find a way out of it. My main objective now is to get the charging order removed and if I have to pay some sort of fee back so be it but what sickens me is that if it is bank chargers then I am disgusted. I am going to write to St Helens Court to begin with to see if they can provide me with further information and following that I will contact HSBC. The frustrating thing is that I am certain that I closed my bank account with First Direct due to their excessive chargers and I moved houses at the time

This thread may be helpful to you :

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/1839539

Donna201077

Did you still manage to remortgage? Only asking as I’m in similar situation