Issues for the Ombudsman

I call this “manufactured authority”. The Bank supplies a false or incomplete account; conclusions are drawn from it; the Bank then presents those conclusions as independent confirmation that its account was right. The false 2007 chronology is another example. Once the resulting decision carries the Ombudsman’s authority, it can be quoted back to customers—or relied upon in later proceedings. It must be right, because that’s what the Ombudsman said!

Reality: the Bank’s later reconstruction showed no arrears, or a credit balance, continuously from 12 March 2014 to 21 April 2023.

The Ombudsman also said that a 2.76-point reduction would not have made the payments affordable during the periods when I paid nothing. On the Bank’s own corrected figures, I owed no arrears during those periods.

“Even if the interest rate had been 2.76% lower than it was (as Mr J says it should have been), the monthly payments would not have been affordable for Mr J during those periods. MAS5 has calculated what the account position would have been had the interest rate been 1.25% lower as recommended by the investigator (and now by me in this decision) – and that confirms the mortgage account would still be in arrears now had the unfair rate increases not been made.”

— Final Decision, 16 September 2024, page 17.

Did you spot what happened there? The Ombudsman is now answering the Bank’s question. The Ombudsman wanted to know what the arrears would have been over time. The Bank gave a conclusion about a single point in time: that in 2024, three years after I referred my complaint to the Service, the account would still be in arrears. The Ombudsman accepted that because the Bank had done the calculation.

So let me do the calculation. With the four increases removed, and on the payments I actually made, my balance at the date of the Final Decision would have been about £160,000. The Bank’s balance, before its small refund, was about £260,000. That is the starting point: where would I have been if the four increases had not been made? How much the Ombudsman then chooses to award back is a separate question.

It is not just my opinion that the increases were outside the contract. In the lead Davies case, on the same mortgage terms and the same increases, the Ombudsman, Simon Pugh, found that “the changes to the SVR MAS5 made between 2009 and 2012 – which collectively added 2.76% to the SVR – were not made for reasons permitted by the contract” (Davies final decision, DRN-4427884, 6 November 2023, page 2). My own Ombudsman wrote that MAS5 “may not have had any contractual justification” for the 2009 increases (Final Decision, page 10). That is a sentence from the Davies decision, copied without the finding that comes before it there: “I don’t think MAS5 acted within its powers”. The breaches of the terms and conditions are the problem. If the Ombudsman chooses not to award more back, or the scheme allows only time-limited redress, that is the Ombudsman’s decision and the scheme’s limit. It has nothing to do with my ability to afford the payments.

I gave the Service information about the effect of compound interest over time. The new evidence is that the Ombudsman was misled.

The reliability of the Bank’s account matters.

Withheld

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 to share it with the Service.

If the smaller correction removes the arrears at the enforcement dates, how does citing a later balance justify the earlier enforcement? That is the contradiction the Service must address. If it refuses to confront the corrected history and simply repeats the original conclusion, I say that refusal would be irrational and open to judicial review. The Bank provided me with the reconstruction spreadsheet in 2025. I say the Bank had the dated figures in 2024, because it gave the Ombudsman a total calculated from them, but it supplied a ledger without them.

In April 2019, after the Bank told me it was starting legal action, and while I was very depressed and finding it difficult to cope, I had three road collisions in two days and suffered a serious head injury. I say the consequences of the wrongful enforcement need to be examined. The later alleged arrears cannot fairly be treated as independent of what happened in 2019.

The vulnerability and safeguarding concerns recorded since 2019 should prompt someone to ask what help I need and whether intervention is required.

My tenacity should not be mistaken for my ability to protect myself.

I say I received no compensation for the 2021 proceedings. The Service must reconcile its finding with the later reconstruction and the consequences of the 2019 enforcement. My contention is that the “last resort” finding cannot rationally be maintained without confronting those facts.

The Bank then told me it would not litigate if there were no arrears. Its own later reconstruction showed that there were no arrears at that time.

This raises the treatment of a known vulnerable customer, the handling of an express safeguarding concern, and the Service’s duties as a public body, including the Article 8 issues I raised.

“Mr says he now feels suicidal after the call.”

The Bank’s complaint record, 18 December 2019. The December page brings together my photographs, the call and CSAT records, Christmas Eve letter and corrected balance comparison.

The subsequent sequence also requires investigation:

• 22 October 2025: Eversheds Sutherland, for the Bank, wrote to the court that “the transfer of the legal title to the Claimant’s Mortgage has already completed and the Defendants do not have legal standing to postpone the registration of the transfer at Land Registry”, and invited the court to dismiss my application without a hearing. Under section 27 of the Land Registration Act 2002, a transfer of a registered charge “does not operate at law until the relevant registration requirements are met”.
• 23 October: the injunction hearing in my personal-data claim against Co-operative Bank was referred to judges’ listing. On the same date, Topaz offered a further 0% “concession” on a mortgage contract I had already terminated, for repudiatory breach, by my notice of 11 August 2025.
• 28 October: Eversheds stated that it did not take instructions from Topaz.
• 30 October: the Land Registry recorded an application to register the transfer, the day before the scheduled hearing. Registration was completed on 11 November.
• 1 November: the start date Topaz’s entry on my credit report gives for an “Arrangement to Pay”, which I dispute.
• 6 November: Topaz expressly confirmed that it would take no enforcement action during the concession period.
• 2 December: Topaz wrote to me, copying the FCA. It said that before the transfer it had exchanged limited information with MAS5 and the Co-operative Bank “under common interest privilege”, that it too used Eversheds as its solicitors, “although such instruction is entirely coincidental”, and that it had extended the 0% rate partly to allow my injunction application “to fall away”. It also told me my 21 October application had been “struck out as being entirely without merit”. The judge had refused the injunction, and his written note says there is “no determination” that either of my claims is “totally without merit”: the designation applied to that one application, and had been presented to him as agreed. That is the account of the hearing the FCA was copied into.

On 16 April 2026, in a notice to Eversheds and Topaz that also went to the FCA, I said that I regarded the coordinated conduct of the Bank and Topaz as “potentially engaging conspiracy to defraud and other serious causes of action and offences”. My account is that Topaz changed from Eversheds to TLT within a week. The communications, instructions and timing require explanation.

From 2024 onwards, I warned the Bank, the FCA and the Service about the risk of customer suicides. Last year, a friend who was also a Co-operative Bank customer took his own life.

The Service must address its responsibilities towards a known vulnerable customer who has expressly raised safeguarding concerns, including vulnerability to financial exploitation following a serious head injury.