Stop Press
Updated November 2009

Supreme Court upholds the Bank’s appeal on bank charges

This is an extremely disappointing decision and in all honesty a surprise to many including ourselves. We are sure the people affected will feel very let down not only by the banks but by the regulations and systems which should be protecting them.

The Supreme Court decision which overrules the previous decisions hangs on an important point of law. They rule that the charges are effectively part of the pricing of bank services and therefore the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) do not have powers under this part of the legislation to determine whether the charges are unfair or not. Interestingly, the judgement seemed at pains to stress that the court does not go beyond this point of law. In their written judgement they have alluded to other parts of the legislation the OFT may wish to investigate and even say that the government has so far decided to take a more lenient view than other European states. Perhaps this is an indication that the banks wouldn’t get away with this in other countries. The court even goes so far as to say it is not the end of the matter and Parliament may wish to get involved.

The OFT will be looking at the judgement carefully and say they will be talking to other authorities and the government before deciding upon their next course of action. We can only hope someone takes a broader view of what is and what isn’t fair. Anyone taking that view would surely reach the conclusion that these charges are exorbitant, and being levied on those who can least afford them, and so are causing untold misery. After two and a half years we thought we would now be at the beginning of the end of this saga but sadly, without intervention, we could be right back to square one. Millions of victims will be hoping that a just conclusion will eventually be reached, but in the meantime the charges continue. Maybe, just maybe, the fact that 2010 is an election year will end up being an important factor.

Customers feeling let down by the banks goes further than just bank charges from the Renaissance point of view, we now handle thousands of other complaints from bank customers who were mis-sold Payment Protection Insurance (PPI), investment bonds and so on. In the last year we have won back over £15million in payment protection insurance compensation alone.

Claims for Credit Card charge refunds are unaffected by the test case.

Read more about the test case here »