I took the ‘charge’ and the original High Court consent order to the senior partner of a leading firm of solicitors in Derby.
His verdict? – Yes the ‘charge’ would give Barclays the right to go back on all that had been agreed, but even worse the High Court Consent Order signed 6 months before was “not worth the paper it was written on”! It was not an agreement at all! Had we been deceived by Karl Davies and the Bank’s solicitors? Was the nightmare to never end? I left the solicitors wondering how to break the news to my wife.
As I arrived home my wife told me that David Cocks at Barclays’ DRU Leeds wanted me to telephone him urgently ‘It was all a mistake, a misunderstanding”! “Someone at the Bank had not read the terms of the Consent Order”
I was furious, how could they take six months to prepare a document not half a page long and then get it wrong!
Did Barclays deliver the documents at the last minute on purpose thinking that we might, unwittingly, Just sign them? Were the clauses to the charge written in such legal jargon so that we might not understand them?
Hurriedly my solicitor redrafted the offending clauses and the documents were signed and delivered just before the ‘deadline.
I complained again to Head Office, Barclays response, from Paul Grenville
Head of Secretariat, in March 1998, was to “offer” to go back to Court! I regarded this letter as a threat not an offer!
In the meantime Mrs Beckett had passed my complaints, complete with cartoons, to Gordon Brown Chancellor of the Exchequer.
EXHIBIT G **Gordon Brown letter
Mrs Beckett had thought that I was making a general complaint about the banking sector. She then wrote, on my behalf, to the Chairman of Barclays.
The Chairman did not reply to Mrs Beckett, Paul Grenville did saying that the Bank was “keen to settle matters amicably”. That was April 1998, it Is now December 2000 and to date Barclays have made not a single proposal as to “settling matters amicably”!
EXHIBIT H ** Letter to Mrs Beckett
Far from it, in August 1999 I asked Barclays to give me details of my remaining bank account. Without realising I gave the correct account name but gave the wrong account number, the number of one of the original loans, account that should have been closed in 1997.
I recognised the envelope, it was the reply from the Bank, – I had expected to find details of an account with a small credit balance. Can you Imagine the shock of seeing a statement showing a debit balance of £98,734.52 !
This is the stuff that heart attacks are made of ! I was shocked and it took a little time to realise what had been sent – details of an account that I believed was long dead and with interest still being added! How many times could they do this to us? Shock again turned to anger and I got on the phone to Barclays at Leeds “It was all a mistake! someone had ‘misread’ a file”! I hadn’t asked anyone to look at a file! I had asked for bank statements or a summary of the account! Apart from which the statement clearly shows debit and credit entries! – It was clearly an account!
EXHIBIT J ** Barclays letter 24/8/99
Barclays at Leeds tried to tell me that the accounts did not in fact exist! Not happy with that I turned to David Powell at Barclays Business Centre Derby. The accounts in question originated at that branch and I wanted them ‘tracking’. He confirmed that two old accounts did exist, they had only Just been closed!
EXHIBIT K ** Barclays letter 20/9/99
This ‘mistake’ had been discovered by accident. I asked myself “What if we never sold Uttoxeter Rd? When my wife and I died, would the Bank have ‘misread the file’ then? Would our children, now aged 12,10 and 8, have been faced with a massive demand from the Bank? They are too young now to fully understand what the family has been through, would anyone have the information in the future to dispute any claim from Barclays?” – Had we left our children a ‘financial time-bomb’? I asked Barclays these questions and they said that there was no question of any ‘financial time-bomb’. But what if they made another ‘mistake’ – they have made so many !