Coventry BS are chasing for £48,000.00 from 1996 repossession. They admit Eagle Star paid out £24,000 on the MIG. Will not provide written confirmation from Eagle Star that they wish Coventry to pursue us for the whole debt. Have done the whole Data Protection Subject Access thing. They have provided us with details but there is no information prior to 24 October 1998. They say that any paper files before that date do not have to be disclosed unitl after 24 October 2007 because of the change in the Data Protection Act. Is this correct? Would they have to provide these details if we went to court? Anyway what I really want to know is what do I do now? We have offered £1,500.00 in full and final settlement. They have rejected this and gone back to " if we do not reach agreement within 7 days we will go to Court". We are prepared to offer £2,000.00 but no more. Have drafted a letter to say this but didn't know whether to include the facts that we do not own our own home, have no savings, own only one car, are paying off £10,000 worth of County Court Judgements. Checked on this site and it said never tell them anything personal. Should I keep quiet and just offer them the £2,000 and see what they say? Any advice greatly appreciated.

-- Alena Ayers (alena@westcoastsolutions.co.uk), February 12, 2001

Answers

Alena,

My understanding of this is as follows. The lender has to disclose everything which is currently held on you electronically (including internal emails) now. It must disclose paper records from October this year. If it is claiming relief from this obligation, it must cite Schedule 7. Did the lender mention Schedule 7 to you in its letter? If not, it should have done, and you can appeal to the Data Protection Commissioner for an Assessment which will help your case. (See www.dpa.org.uk).

If the lender takes you to court it will need to disclose all the documents relevant to your case. If the lender produces these at the last minute, ask for an adjournment on these grounds, and come back to this site. In the (possibly unlikely) event of a court hearing, make sure that you insist that the *originals* are produced for the court. This includes the mortgage deed and the original MIG. I would love to see an original (or any!) MIG pre-1993.

It is up to you what information you give the lender. From my own point of view, I believe that an individual's personal information is their own until told otherwise by a court of law. If, however, you are comfortable about negotiating your alleged liability on your shortfall, and you feel that it would benefit the lender and speed up the process by informing the lender that your financial position is quite precarious, you may be right to imply that this needs to be made clear to the lender. But think carefully about what you are doing.

My understanding is that this site dissuades people from filling in Income & Expenditure form on the grounds that this could be seen as admitting liability. This site works hard to protect people from falling into the common traps.

Parties involved in negotiations often choose to head their letters "Without Prejudice", which allows them to negotiate realistically without admitting liability either way. You might choose to do some resaerch on this area. There are threads below this one which might help.

Personally, I would want to know: has the lender got a case on which you should be negotiating a large sum of money you say you haven't got? Did the lender sell your house at under-value? This seems to be the common thread which brings people to this site.

In this case, I would write to your MP, and ask him to sign Mike Hancock MP's EDM.

But these are just my ideas based on experience and reading. I am not qualified to offer legal or financial advice, OK?

-- Eleanor Scott (eleanor.scott@btinternet.com), February 12, 2001.