04 / April 2019
My account of April 2019
In April 2019 I was working in a primary care role as an HCPC-registered paramedic. The Bank was once again pursuing repossession on the basis of arrears that I say it knew did not exist. Its own instruction to its solicitors on 2 April 2019 recorded my previous hospital treatment for depression.
Letters, calls and litigation decisions from the disclosed records, compared with the Bank’s later reconstruction. On every dated event below, that reconstruction records nil arrears, even under its limited 1.25-percentage-point correction.
The amounts labelled “alleged” come from the dated documents; a dash means no amount is listed here for that call. The black boxes represent individual wholly redacted pages from Topaz’s DSAR. Their placement follows the review bundle, not an established date for their hidden contents. These are representations of the blacked-out pages, not reproductions of readable material.
Payment shortfall letter
Arrears alleged in this document: £1,024.67
Period 2B bundle pp.44 · Reconstruction: E-CON-14 p.36Payment shortfall letter and field-agent warning
Arrears alleged in this document: £1,024.67
Period 2B bundle pp.45–46 · Reconstruction: E-CON-14 p.36Separate quarterly arrears notice
Arrears alleged in this document: £1,024.67
Period 2B bundle pp.47–52 · Reconstruction: E-CON-14 p.36Warning that payment was required
Arrears alleged in this document: £2,049.34
Period 2B bundle pp.53–54 · Reconstruction: E-CON-14 p.37Incoming call, connected
Arrears alleged in this document: —
Period 2B bundle pp.55–58 · Reconstruction: E-CON-14 p.37Payment-arrangement confirmation letter
Arrears alleged in this document: £1,024.67
Period 2B bundle pp.59–60 · Reconstruction: E-CON-14 p.37Letter saying the payment arrangement had ended
Arrears alleged in this document: £3,074.01
Period 2B bundle pp.63–64 · Reconstruction: E-CON-14 p.38Outgoing call attempt, unsuccessful
Arrears alleged in this document: —
Period 2B bundle pp.58, 62 · Reconstruction: E-CON-14 p.38Outgoing call attempt, unsuccessful
Arrears alleged in this document: —
Period 2B bundle pp.62 · Reconstruction: E-CON-14 p.38Intention to start repossession proceedings; 15 working days to contact the firm
Arrears alleged in this document: £3,074.01
Period 2B bundle pp.65–66 · Reconstruction: E-CON-14 p.38Incoming call, connected. The call record confirms a £1,024.67 payment that day.
Arrears alleged in this document: —
Period 2B bundle pp.67–70; payment at 68 · Reconstruction: E-CON-14 p.38Arrears warning requiring payment—the day after the recorded payment
Arrears alleged in this document: £2,049.34
Period 2B bundle pp.71; related copy at 54 · Reconstruction: E-CON-14 p.38Quarterly arrears notice, six days after the warning
Arrears alleged in this document: £2,049.34
Period 2B bundle pp.72–74 · Reconstruction: E-CON-14 p.38Another intention-to-repossess warning
Arrears alleged in this document: £3,074.01
Period 2B bundle pp.75; related copy at 66 · Reconstruction: E-CON-14 p.38Review-bundle pages 78–83; Topaz Batch 5 pages 63–68. Dates and contents unknown. No dated arrears figure is assigned to these pages.
Final repossession warning: pay or make an arrangement, otherwise referral to solicitors
Arrears alleged in this document: £3,074.01
Period 2B bundle pp.84–85 · Reconstruction: E-CON-14 p.39Internal referral recommending commencement of litigation
Arrears alleged in this document: £3,074.01
Period 2B bundle pp.86–89 · Reconstruction: E-CON-14 p.39Internal decision authorising commencement of litigation
Arrears alleged in this document: £3,074.01
Period 2B bundle pp.90–91 · Reconstruction: E-CON-14 p.39Litigation referral letter: account transferred back to solicitors to recommence legal action
Arrears alleged in this document: £4,098.68
Period 2B bundle pp.92 · Reconstruction: E-CON-14 p.39Separate litigation-transfer letter and arrears statement; possession proceedings described as the next stage
Arrears alleged in this document: £4,098.68
Period 2B bundle pp.93–94 · Reconstruction: E-CON-14 p.39Solicitors to continue legal action; £22 charged, with any new repayment arrangement required to be secured by a suspended court order
Arrears alleged in this document: £4,098.68
Period 2B bundle pp.95–96 · Reconstruction: E-CON-14 p.39Review-bundle pages 98–104; Topaz Batch 5 pages 78–84. Dates and contents unknown. No dated arrears figure is assigned to these pages.
Instruction to Walker Morris, recording my previous hospital treatment for depression
Arrears alleged in this document: £4,098.68
Period 2B bundle pp.156 · Reconstruction: E-CON-14 p.39Review-bundle pages 159–163; Topaz Batch 5 pages 86–90. Dates and contents unknown. No dated arrears figure is assigned to these pages.
Sources: Period 2B, 2018–2019, Service copy, pp.44–96 and 156; redaction source notes at pp.77, 97 and 158. Bank reconstruction E-CON-14, pp.36–39: the reconstructed-arrears column displays a dash for these dates, meaning nil. On 22 March the internal decision form still states £3,074.01; the Bank’s daily as-charged reconstruction records £4,098.68 for that date. The figure above retains what the decision form actually said. Whole-page redactions shown: Topaz Batch 5 pp.63–68, 78–84 and 86–90.
At the end of March 2019 the Bank told me it was starting legal action. I was finding it very difficult to cope and was very depressed, but I had to keep working to pay the mortgage. Over two days in April I had three road collisions. My head smashed the windscreen, and I have had the effects of a head injury ever since. I never worked again.
The Bank’s own servicing diary records no telephone call with me, in either direction, between 11 February 2019 and 27 April 2019, after my collisions. In that time it wrote on 12 and 26 February that I had not responded to its attempts to contact me, warned of repossession proceedings on 19 March, moved the account to litigation on 23 March and instructed its solicitors on 2 April.
I say years of pressure from the Bank’s enforcement, intensified by the 2019 escalation, caused or materially aggravated my psychiatric breakdown. Documents showing the extent of that earlier enforcement were not in the file the Ombudsman had.
The Ombudsman needs to look at them. Across the record before the Final Decision, 91 enforcement letters or threats were missing from the file as originals, and with 31 further recurring demands the total is 122 (see “The missing enforcement record” on the enforcement page).
My case is that there were never any true arrears. The starting point is the contractual rate, whether that is the rate with the restrictive covenant or the rate without the four increases. It is the Emperor’s new clothes again: the interest rate appeared to track Bank Rate, but the margin tracked only itself, and was based on nothing but itself. Even on the Bank’s own minimal calculation, I was not in arrears in April 2019.
The Service needs to look at the facts, not the assertions: calculate the contractual rate, work out where the mortgage really stood, and apply any limits on redress afterwards. Arrears that exist only because of arbitrary increases to the interest rate are not true arrears. If I simply asserted that the Bank owed me £100,000, nobody would take that as fact, still less set it against the arrears. So why is the Bank’s assertion of arrears treated as fact?
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Information the Bank gave the Financial Conduct Authority is relevant to my case. The FCA released it to me in response to my subject access request, but under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 I cannot publish it without consent; doing so would be a criminal offence. I have asked for permission.
This is the two-audience problem again. To the Ombudsman, the Co-operative Bank has given false accounts of the restrictive covenant, the date my mortgage was transferred, whether GMAC would have known that my mortgage would be sold on, the arrears position of my mortgage in the decade before the decision, my health conditions, and the funding costs of the mortgages. 122 enforcement and arrears threat letters are not in the Service's file that was given to me.
Yet the investors were given details of the restrictive covenants, as was I, but only after the investigation, the investors were given the mortgage transfer dates, GMAC knew the mortgages were likely to be sold on, and in 2006 MAS4 and 5 were part way through a two year period of acquiring them. The Bank had the calculations to show I had no reconstructed arrears in 2019, or for over 9 years, and eventually showed them to me, but only in 2025, and they are not present in the Service's file or decision from 2024.
The Service was missing most of the enforcement letters, despite asking for them twice, once in 2021 and again in 2024. The Co-op disclosures to me had many of them, but others had been passed to Topaz so came to me that way, and 80 whole pages are redacted in the Topaz DSAR, and not all at periods of litigation. Over three hundred and fifty contact notes are undated. If you remove what harms, assert what helps, and misrepresent what's left, then the lawyers earn their fee.
The Bank stated "By October 2018 Mr Jarrett was unemployed and also taking time to help care for his stepfather". Yet I was a PAYE employee with the same agency from 2013. To another audience, a different story was given about my employment. It's time to join the dots. The Co-operative Bank knew perfectly well that I did not owe any arrears at any point in this mortgage.
The business model was to charge as much as possible, repossess at the three-month trigger, or force into assisted voluntary sale. That's what the Bank tells its investors, but does not tell the Ombudsman or me. In its own words, we were managed for value and targeted for rundown or exit. My Ombudsman decided that I'd been treated unfairly in 2019 and litigation action had commenced too quickly. I'm grateful for that decision, because it was the first time I'd seen it written down that I might have been treated badly, and I did thank her for that.
Open balance comparison PDF ↗
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Open certificate image at full size ↗
The Bank’s own notes also record my work: on 9 January 2017, “Mr is a self-employed Paramedic who is only paid when he works”; and on 15 August 2019, “Mr is a paramedic so has medical knowledge”.
Open the full Bank email page ↗
The request, the answer and the later April rows
The Ombudsman asked for the lower-rate account position and arrears from 2014 onward (the Service’s cut-off, which I dispute). The Bank’s 5 June reply said the calculation was complete, but enclosed an R172 transaction report for the account as charged. That report has a running as-charged “Balance” column—not the recalculated balance and corrected arrears history she requested. The later April 2019 rows below were not included in that reply.
The investigator asked what the account position would have been from 2014 onward if the lower interest rate had applied, including the effect on arrears present from time to time. The request also sought contact notes and correspondence.
E-FOS-11, pp.1–2. The website viewer masks personal identifiers; the source PDF remains unchanged.
Read the two-page request →The Bank gave a £33,355.80 redress total and an R172 report of transactions and the as-charged running balance. It said missed payments meant arrears would still have arisen at the lower rate. Its own reconstruction shows no arrears, or a credit, every day from 12 March 2014 to 21 April 2023, including both possession actions. The reply in the Service’s file did not include the dated recalculated balances or corrected arrears the Ombudsman asked for. I did not accept the earlier redress; the firm credited it to my account on 21 October 2024.
E-FOS-12, pp.1–5. The viewer includes the reply and R172 ledger; identifying details are masked.
Read the reply and ledger →This extract is from the Bank’s own day-by-day reconstruction (E-CON-14). Its four columns are original balance, original arrears, reconstructed balance and reconstructed arrears. From 28 February to 18 April 2019 the original arrears column shows £3,074.01, rising to £4,098.68 from 22 March. The reconstructed arrears column shows nil every day, including the days of my crash.
Website image rendered from Jon’s selected April balance.pdf. The original PDF is preserved outside the website package.
Open April rows at full size →The later admission · 9 June 2025
Under the Ombudsman’s limited redress method, the Bank said the account at the time of the April 2019 solicitor’s letter would have been “notionally clear of arrears”. It qualified that statement by questioning what payments I would have made at a lower rate. Its own reconstruction shows no arrears, or a credit, every day from 12 March 2014 to 21 April 2023, including both possession actions.
The email did not say whether the dated reconstruction had been sent to the Ombudsman. I identified the unanswered question after asking the Service for its file: the June 2024 reply shown above did not include the corrected balance and arrears history she had requested.
Read the 9 June 2025 email thread →Two rendered pages from my selected PDF copy: my same-day reply followed by the Bank’s quoted email. My personal email address is masked.
Read the fuller request, reply, Decision and later admission sequence →