Financial Ombudsman Service

My request for reconsideration, which may impact everyone's interest rate.

I have asked the Service to reconsider its 2024 decisions in my mortgage complaints. I say the Bank made a series of false statements and unsupported assertions, several of them to the Service. The clearest is the covenant: one covenant, two different years (see below). There are many others, but that one has the advantage of being in writing, twice.

The Bank’s stated plan was to run down the mortgage book and dispose of most of it by 2018. In 2024 I told my Ombudsman that the Bank was just telling a story. It was, just not the one I thought, and the interest rate was only the first chapter.

Topaz Finance was very keen to register the legal title to my disputed mortgage. I say it worked with Eversheds Sutherland and the Co-operative Bank to keep the High Court from looking too closely. It hasn’t quite gone to plan: Topaz’s own conduct is now part of my request for reconsideration. We may yet be back on the High Court stage, with the Co-op and Topaz in the wings this time instead of directing.

And the file the Bank passed to Topaz holds another couple’s Ombudsman decision where mine should be. Theirs continued a 1.25-point rate reduction going forward; mine ended it in November 2022. So the least I’m asking the Ombudsman for is the rate my own file says I’ve already got. (My full case is the covenant rate, Bank Rate + 1.99%, from December 2008. This is just the starter.) It’s not often a reconsideration request comes pre-approved by the other side’s paperwork. If everyone else in the same book gets it too, I’ll write a book of my own. Fiction doesn’t usually come with exhibit numbers.

Which decision, and which account? →

Start with the evidence

How the mortgages were bought.
How they were managed.

The thread through every page

One Bank. Many audiences.

The Bank has different versions of events for different audiences: the High Court, the FCA, the Ombudsman, its investors, its customers, the media, its charity partners… This is the Bank’s “two-audience” problem. Sometimes the Bank forgets which story has been told to which audience, and now Topaz, Eversheds and TLT are joining in, so in these pages I endeavour to assist.

What the Bank told the FCA: withheld under FSMA 2000.

Examples: the covenant · April 2019 · the 2021 claim · the business model · my work and paramedic registration · all the examples, side by side →

01 / The acquisition

One covenant. Two different years.

Compare what the Bank told me with what it told the Ombudsman.

Compare the accounts → 02 / The protection

The covenant itself

Read the wording and the argument about the December 2008 reduction.

Read the covenant → 03 / The business model

Managed for value. Value for whom?

The run-down strategy, the interest rates and the investor records.

Follow the evidence →

Or start with my own story ↓

Organisations mentioned in this account

These logos identify the organisations discussed below. This is an independent customer website and is not affiliated with or endorsed by them.

The Co-operative Bank
Topaz Finance
Coventry Building Society and The Co-operative Bank
Aspiro Mortgages

Published 6 October 2026

The Emperor’s new mortgage

The plain-English version, for anyone who doesn’t speak lawyer.

A day out at the High Court

On 21 August 2025 I went to the High Court with my bundles of papers. The Co-operative Bank had already written down its version of my story, and we all know that if a bank writes something down, it must be true. I wanted my version on the record too.

In 2025 I sent at least 58 emails to the Co-operative Bank/MAS5, many expressing dissatisfaction. I spoke to MAS5 by phone on three dates that year and made further complaints. On 14 August the Co-operative Bank’s legal department replied: “Please note that we will hold future correspondence of this nature on file and it will not be responded to.” The same day, according to Topaz, the Bank emailed Topaz and called my challenge to the transfer a “complaint”. Despite all those emails, it had not referred me to the Ombudsman. So I did what every other customer does: I went for a chat with a High Court judge. It’s a free service, and I’ll probably use it again.

(By October, with a different judge involved, the Bank seemed to have lost all those emails. Its solicitor had told the court, in a witness statement, that the Bank “will provide all disclosable documents”. Documents followed in batches; my emails were not among them. So I put them all on a USB stick for the FCA to read. But that bit comes later.)

Since my head injury in 2019 I often don’t recognise faces, which makes Ubers interesting. A driver pulls up, says “Hello Jon, how are you?”, and I haven’t a clue who he is. A lot of them know I don’t drive, but that I used to: I was a paramedic, working from a response car based at my home just south of Cambridge. They know the whole story because I’ve told them. Then I forget I’ve told them, and tell them again. I’m getting better at not doing that.

I don’t get out much: about once every six weeks, if I’m honest. (My medical notes describe me as “housebound”: getting through the front door is a challenge, and often it doesn’t happen.) Going out makes me anxious, so on go the headphones to block out the noise. The train should have taken a little over an hour. I got on two wrong trains, so it took a bit longer.

I found the Royal Courts of Justice, and a judge agreed to see me. There wasn’t even a queue. It was all new, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Writing things down was very hard for me back then (it’s a bit easier now), which I told the Financial Ombudsman Service many times. They didn’t seem to believe me. Talking is another matter. I can talk for hours about my case, though sometimes I know the words and they take a while to come out. I would have done, too, but the judge had other cases to hear. So I handed in my bundles and my witness statement, had about half an hour in court, and my work was done.

The Emperor’s new clothes

The Bank’s legal department was not happy. I was very happy. It need not have come to this, they barked at me. (All right, I’m imagining the barking. It was an email.) I had done the one thing you’re not allowed to do: I’d pointed out that the Emperor had no clothes on. In my statement I said I thought the Bank might have known I didn’t owe it the money it was chasing me for.

The Bank was fuming. I was smiling. And from then on, things got worse.

Read on: the rest of the story

Some of the issues I have put to the Ombudsman

Continue reading

The wider case

The caseSome of the issues I have put to the Ombudsman, with the evidence for each.See the issues →Topaz nowWhat has happened since my mortgage was transferred: the file Topaz is using against my home, what it knew, and how independent it is.Read 2024–26 →My experienceLeaving my home, the meeting I sought and the disputed arrangement recorded after it.Read my experience →The evidenceDocuments and video, the 123 letters one by one, the enforcement tables, and the Bank’s assertions set against the evidence.See the evidence →Contacthelp@mas5.co.uk, and how to ask for a correction or a right of reply.Contact me →

The documents now available

No evidence of dishonesty?

“I did not find that there was evidence of bad faith, or dishonesty, on MAS5’s part.”

Simon Pugh, lead decision, 6 November 2023, p.16. Read the decision →

Ombudsman Simon Pugh made that statement in November 2023. It is now looking dated. In the lead case, the Bank dated the covenant to March 2006, although that mortgage was bought under a separate sale agreement on 8 June 2007. I say that was the wrong covenant date for that mortgage. In my case, the Bank later gave a false 2007 date for my mortgage’s transfer and covenant. Over 100 enforcement letters and demands, along with court documents, are missing from the disclosed FOS file.

Despite being asked for the arrears position over time, the Bank supplied a lump-sum figure rather than the historical answer requested. Its own reconstruction shows no arrears for more than nine years—even on the limited correction—including at the key enforcement dates. I say the later alleged arrears reflect charges left uncorrected. They cannot retrospectively justify the earlier enforcement.

My decision also relied on default costs to the Co-operative Bank Group. How does that fit with the Bank’s own account of Avon’s beneficial ownership and the planned transfer of legal title?

I say the firm presented past, treated health problems as current conditions. I was working as a paramedic until 10 April 2019. Its own records confirm I was working until my car accident, which happened while the Bank was enforcing arrears that, I say, it knew were fabricated.

In fact, it’s hard to see what the investigation of my complaint achieved at all. But the false statements may come in useful. I cannot publish the confidential material supplied to the FCA.

I am asking the Service to reconsider my case on the documents now available.

The missing letters → · The arrears question → · The group-cost comparison → · My work and the Bank’s records →