Old charge on house deeds, what to do?!

WileOut

Hey all, I think I’ve come to the right place for advice on house selling process, so here goes!
My late father’s house is sale agreed, but there’s a delay in exchanging contracts due to a charge on the property from 1990 which we were completely unaware of. It is not connected to the mortgage, and the only details on the land registry title deeds state ‘NatWest securities department’ with an address at Lowry House in Manchester. Despite us writing, emailing and calling nobody at NatWest can help - they can’t find the account or give me the contact details of the right person to talk to. Any further delays could seriously jeopardise the sale. 

Has anyone else had a charge recorded on title deeds stating this NatWest department with this address? If so, how did you resolve it as we can’t get hold of anyone!
Much appreciation for any tips, pointing  in the right direction or general wise words! Thanks 😆

davidmcn

A complaint might help it get to somebody with the ability to sort it out.

WileOut

Thank you for the suggestion, we’ll get onto that 👍
 I thought others may have come across this problem, but that doesn’t appear to be the case?!

davidmcn

WileOut said:

Thank you for the suggestion, we’ll get onto that 👍
 I thought others may have come across this problem, but that doesn’t appear to be the case?!

Not specifically, but it's fairly common for mortgages to be redeemed and the security not to have been discharged at the time. Which leaves the bank confused by requests to sign something years after they've removed all trace of the account from their records - if they can't work out why they've got a security over the property, they will tend to be paranoid that there might be a good reason for them to retain it. When of course it ought to be turned the other way round i.e. if they can't find a reason for having the security then it's obviously archaic and they should discharge it. It's probably beyond the capabilities of the normal mortgage department staff though so will need escalated to somebody who realises what's happened and what needs to be done. Ultimately it can be sorted via court though that would be a very slow last resort.

"Securities department" suggests it was to do a mortgage of some sort.