My account, 2022–26

The battle for my data

I say the Bank did not give me all my personal data before the Ombudsman’s decision, and I still do not have it all. Before I brought a High Court claim, I made subject access requests to the Bank in 2022 and repeatedly in 2025, and each time received only a small bundle of papers. In 2025, after bringing the claim, I obtained further personal data from the Co-operative Bank. I say some of those documents were fabricated, and seeing them had a devastating effect on my health. Even then I did not see the Bank’s servicing diary; it had never been disclosed to me. Topaz sent me its disclosure in December 2025, but I could not look at it until May 2026: I had realised the significance of the fabricated documents and needed to see a therapist. May 2026 was the first time I saw the diary.

Hundreds of the pages the Bank disclosed in 2025 lacked date fields, which made the history difficult to reconstruct, and some documents were repeated nine times in a row. The disclosure included the statement I gave to the High Court in 2022, in which I referred to being a paramedic, with undated old call records placed on either side of it. The same undated sheets were passed to Topaz. Apart from letters and the servicing diary, they are the only call notes in Topaz’s file. One of them says I “was a paramedic but had an injury and gave up”, and that I was due £50,000 from the ambulance service. I dispute the £50,000 figure and the note’s characterisation of my injuries and employment. The servicing diary itself dates the note to 10 October 2012. I will send the undated documents to the Financial Ombudsman Service. If my request for reconsideration ends in a judicial review, the Administrative Court will see the whole file, and the lack of evidence will be the evidence.

In 2012 and 2013 I taught student paramedics at Sheffield Hallam University. In late 2013 I returned to paramedic work through an agency, in the Norfolk doctors’ out-of-hours service, which the East of England Ambulance Service ran under contract. Those shifts were filled through agencies. At that time it was not possible to hold a permanent post there as a paramedic or as an Emergency Care Practitioner, which is what I was: a role that needs a paramedic or nurse with further training and experience. The Bank seems to have a problem with the title “paramedic”, but that is what I was. At various times I worked for the police, the ambulance service and out-of-hours services, and it was my paramedic registration that allowed me to do that work. I stayed with the same agency, covering out-of-hours shifts in Norfolk until 2017. I also worked occasional shifts for the out-of-hours provider in Cambridge, which employed me directly. In 2018 the agency placed me at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, and then in Lincolnshire, where I worked until 10 April 2019.

I was registered as a paramedic until 2024, and I had hoped to return. I doubt I will ever drive again, or indeed be the same again, and I am now medically retired. What happened to me in April 2019 is why the Ombudsman needs to look at the earlier history of the account, which the Co-operative Bank did not give her at the time. Because the undated notes sit in the file Topaz is now using against my home, I am happy to clear up any misunderstanding the Bank has about my occupation. Eversheds Sutherland, the Bank’s solicitors, has my contact details, and I will give it my employment history. TLT, which has acted for Topaz since I raised concerns about coordinated conduct, can have my CV if needed.

I have previously spoken to journalists about the Co-operative Bank. It is a tragedy for any homeowner to lose the place they live, particularly a family, and my case is no worse than anyone else’s. But for the “ethical” Co-op, it is not a good look when a paramedic is seriously injured while his bank is pursuing him for arrears, and it then turns out, as I say, that the Ombudsman was never told the answer to the question she asked: that on the Bank’s own figures there were no arrears at the time.

In 2025 I tried to delay the transfer of my mortgage until the data issues were resolved. I say the Co-operative Bank and Topaz Finance acted together, through the same solicitors. On 23 October 2025, the day my injunction application was referred for listing, Topaz extended a 0% interest rate on a mortgage contract that I say I had already terminated, and on which I was paying nothing. It later wrote that its reasons included allowing my application “to fall away”. Not knowing that at the time, I did not press the application. Topaz was very organised, given that I did not tell it about my injunction application until 28 October. The Land Registry application was made on 30 October, the day before the hearing. On 2 December 2025 Topaz wrote: “As your account is currently on a 0% concession, we also report that there is an arrangement in place.” My credit report shows that entry as an “Arrangement to Pay” starting on 1 November 2025. I had not agreed to any arrangement, and I did not know about it until I involved the FCA by copying it into my emails. The full sequence →

The Bank also created records stating that I had agreed to a zero-interest arrangement. I say that record of agreement was fabricated. I had stopped paying, and I had made it clear, including to the hundreds of people on my mailing list, many of whom I had helped complain about the Bank, that I did not believe any court would uphold a contract after years of relentless repossession pressure that had left me injured. I say the Bank needed a record showing that I had affirmed the contract before it passed my mortgage to Topaz, and that this was the purpose of the meeting it promised me. I say I was coerced into handing over my financial information and sensitive information about my disability. After years of repossession attempts, the Bank had written on 23 April 2025 demanding that I repay the whole mortgage within 15 working days, warning of legal action that could lead to repossession. It later said its legal action was paused; I say there was never going to be any, because it was waiting to hand me over to Topaz. The Bank said it would meet me once I had provided the information. I provided it in good faith, and the meeting was then withdrawn. On 2 July 2025 I wrote to the person at the Bank who had promised me that meeting, copied to its MAS5 mortgage mailbox: “I think that this call was more of a fishing expedition so that you could tick a few boxes.” I added: “Now I think that you are going to make me homeless, or sell my mortgage to Topaz and they will make me homeless, but I did not do anything wrong.” I reminded the Bank of the crisis I had had the year before, and wrote: “I will not survive a repossession.”

Well, I wasn't in a good place then, but I am now. Even so, it matters that the Service looks at how I was treated in the year after my complaint was decided. I say that conduct is new evidence: together with the personal data I say the Bank has still not given me, it bears on the reliability of the account the Bank gave of its earlier treatment of me.

The Bank’s letters then treated me as having agreed. On 9 July 2025 the Bank wrote that it had “now implemented a zero interest rate on your mortgage”: implemented, not agreed. On 17 July a MAS5 letter headed “Confirmation of Interest Rate Concession” dated the concession from 11 June 2025, the day of the call, although the servicer’s own note of that call reads “SOLUTIONS OFFERED / AGREED ACTIONS N/A”. It referred to “the agreed period”, and said the concession would be reported to the credit reference agencies as an “arrangement”, which “shows other lenders that you have agreed a plan with us”. Under the heading “What happens if I change my mind?”, it said: “You have 10 days to change your mind from the date of this letter. If you have arrears and choose not to proceed with this arrangement, you’ll continue to receive contact from us.” I had not agreed. There was no agreement for me to change my mind about. On 28 July I wrote that I did not acknowledge any debt or arrears. On 11 August I gave notice that I treated the mortgage contract as terminated, and I repeated it in writing on 13 August. On 21 August I was in the High Court. Then, on 30 September, another letter with the same heading and the same wording extended the “concession” to 22 October, still dated from 11 June. By then I wasn’t engaging with any of it: I had terminated the contract and been to court, so there was nothing left for me to decline. On 3 October I sent the letter to Eversheds and told them its content “does not alter my position” and “is not accepted as correct as to liability or sums said to be due”. I say these letters were simply building a paper trail, and that writing to a vulnerable customer in that way, after years of repossession attempts, is coercion.

The marker appeared anyway. My Experian record, last updated on 21 September 2025, shows no arrangement. My credit report of 3 April 2026 shows an “arrangement” from October 2025 to February 2026, after I had terminated the contract, been to court and told Eversheds that the letter’s content was not accepted.

Experian, last updated 21 September 2025: no arrangement ↗

Credit report, 3 April 2026: “AR” from October 2025 ↗

The arrears history is wrong too. The Ombudsman’s Final Decision told MAS5 to recalculate my mortgage at the lower rate, and said: “This will result in changes to the arrears balance from time to time, and so MAS5 should also amend Mr J’s credit file to reflect the revised position” (pages 23–24). The Bank’s own reconstruction shows no arrears, or a credit balance, every day from 12 March 2014 to 21 April 2023, and in July 2025 it told me that MAS5 “has accepted the final FOS decision and has redressed you accordingly”. Yet both records above still show me in arrears, month after month, through years when the Bank’s own figures say I owed nothing: “missed” on Experian, and arrears codes rising to “6” (six months or more behind) on the 2026 report. When I asked, the Bank said the account “would have been notionally clear of arrears” in April 2019, but that “it is not possible to definitively reconstruct your arrears balance”. The Ombudsman asked for exactly that reconstruction, and for the credit file to follow it.

On 11 February 2026, copying the FCA, I asked Topaz for the second time whether the Bank had told it that I had consented. The next day I told the Bank’s solicitors, again copying the FCA, that I had never discussed interest rates with the Capita employee whose email recorded my consent, and asked for any record of it. On 18 February Topaz replied that the Bank had told it the rate was “unilaterally applied” and that I “had not asked them to apply one”. That avoided the question I had asked, which was whether I had consented. I had neither requested nor agreed to the rate or an arrangement. Where was the evidence of my consent? In fact, when the Bank proposed extending the 0% rate and invited me to contact it if I wished to decline, I replied on 8 August 2025: “I do not acknowledge the debt. I do not accept the legitimacy of the arrears.” In April 2026 I sent the documents I say were fabricated to a journalist. I had objected in emails to the Bank in 2025, did so again in 2026, and sent those emails to the FCA as well.

With the FCA looking on, from a distance, Topaz gave me its subject access response on a memory stick. I say Topaz has been supplied with, and is willing to use, a curated repossession file, curated to defeat any claim I have. It was arranged to suggest that an injury had ended my paramedic career before 2019, and that I had affirmed the contract. In fact, I returned to paramedic work and worked until April 2019. My own Ombudsman’s Final Decision was not located in it; another borrower’s was, awarding an additional 1.25-percentage-point reduction going forward that I did not receive. In the file Topaz disclosed to me, eighty whole pages are blacked out. The servicing diary, which the Bank never provided to me, records the solicitors’ pre-action letter and the possession proceedings as both issued on 9 April 2019; the letter I hold is dated 3 April, and I was injured on 11 April.

The file also contains a rather blurred Co-op Bank email, which I had already seen in the Co-op’s own disclosure, saying the Bank had “agreed that we will implement a zero interest rate” on my mortgage. The Bank’s own email of 25 June 2025 had asked me: “Please let us know if you would like us to implement the reduced interest rate…”. That question is in the Co-op’s disclosure. In Topaz’s file, the earlier May and June exchanges come after the Bank’s 1 July email, bunched together with my own emails, and my objections are buried in a different part of the file. I doubt my correspondence would be in the file at all if I had not made a subject access request and copied in the FCA: it is out of chronological order, separate from the Bank’s curated version. The Bank’s own disclosure also contains a very crisp email stating plainly that I had consented to the zero interest rate. So many internal records that I asked for, even basic ones, were missing, but that one made it through. The only remaining problem is finding the agreement itself. Fabricating documents is serious, especially while High Court proceedings are on foot. Topaz’s file also appears to be missing the notices I sent it by Special Delivery in August 2025, before it became so keen to acquire my mortgage (Royal Mail delivered them on 12, 15 and 19 August), and the emails it replied to.

I have repeatedly asked for the evidence that I agreed to the arrangement they recorded. The responses have not answered that question. After I raised concerns about coordinated conduct, copying in the FCA, Topaz changed solicitors, but the question remains the same: where is my agreement? It remains awkwardly unanswered. The records and the responses →

Seeing a record saying I had consented, when I had not, left me feeling I could not protect my position. I told the Financial Ombudsman Service that I felt as if I was being attacked by two mortgage lenders at the same time, and I still do. By February 2026, when I had seen only the Co-op’s disclosure, I was panicking and struggling to cope, so I organised therapy. My therapist was concerned and needed to make a safeguarding report to my GP. Another third party made a safeguarding report. In my view, this is what happens when two mortgage lenders and a firm of solicitors coordinate their actions to ensure that your home is repossessed.

Last year another Co-operative Bank (MAS5) customer died. He had become a good friend, and he had also stood up to the Bank. I did not know when I first went to the High Court on 21 August 2025: he had died a month earlier, and I had been unable to contact him. It is time for a public body to step in. If none does, I will make an application to the Administrative Court, and we can have some much-needed judicial oversight. I struggle to get things written, but now that I have other help, I can manage.

To me, it feels as though I am living someone else’s life. But when you have worked as a paramedic on a response car for many years, you learn that you are on your own. You deal with whatever comes along, and it becomes second nature. It was a great career, and it made me resilient. The documents I say the Bank fabricated put me out of action for a while, as did the file passed to Topaz, but I will bounce back. Looking back, I realise that what I was put through, as many others were, was a very nasty form of institutionalised abuse. It went on for so long that I didn’t question it, and even now it is difficult to believe that I was not really in arrears. I say the Bank framed the investigation around four interest-rate increases; what happened before and after them was not in the frame.

The Service needs to consider its obligations as a public body, and its own claims about how it treats vulnerable customers and adults at risk.