Lloyds TSB & Data Protection Act

Sorry about your mum's hip, hope she recovers soon.

Have you thought about Power of Attorney? You could then do whatever needs doing on her account.

I do see the bank's POV on the 'phone call TBH. They do have to be careful, the DPA is personal so it's not just the bank that can be prosecuted, it's the bank employee as well. So if your mum couldn't hear well enough to answer the security questions, they were just protecting her account as they should.

No excuse for losing the cheque though. Didn't they even offer you/your mum an overdraft for the interim?

You will need to register the PoA with the bank. LTSB do know about PoAs and have a good system in place (well, as good as any of the banks, so slightly less than hopeless!) and you don't need to register it with the OPG first unless she is losing mental capacity (I'm assuming it's an EPA, signed prior to 1 Oct 07?). And your mother will not need to be present.

The registration is a bit of a pain but once this is done you can deal with all her banking affairs.

POA or becoming a joint party on the account is the only way forward.

To monitor her accounts, register for internet banking (if she wants you to keep an eye on her accounts)

POA is a nightmare. Register it both for branch and Telephone banking. It will be a god send once you have done it.

LTSB were like that when I had a query on my mother's account (before PoA days). When I passed the phone over to her, he was asking her all sorts of questions she didn't understand the reason for, like whether I could hear the conversation, whether I was telling her what to say etc. Trouble was, being a weekend, I think we were switched over to Bangalore or somewhere and she could hardly understand what he was saying, so we didn't get anywhere! The trouble with those places is they just read from a script and can't do the 'common-sense approach'.