How-to Guides » OLD GUIDE Reclaim bank charges

Respond to a bank's defence

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In the event that your bank files a defence to your court action, you and the defendant will receive an Allocation Questionnaire. This is for you to tell the court by what rules you'd like the case to proceed. You need to complete and return this within 14 days. If your claim is over £1,500 you'll need to pay a fee of £100, although some people on state benefits may not have to pay it. You can also ask the court to defer this payment if you give them a good enough reason.

Filling in the Allocation Questionnaire

You'll get plenty of guidance regardless of whether you're claiming online, or whether your case has bizarrely been transferred to a paper one like mine. Even so, here are some tips:

• Section A - Before taking the claim to court you should already have tried to settle this with the defendant (as I explained in Reclaim Your Bank And Card Charges). They're clearly not budging, so I'd put 'No'.
• Section B - If you used Money Claim Online, the court will usually have transferred the claim to your local court already. If you want to move the trial location, tick 'Yes', put the court details in here and explain why. If not, tick 'No'.
• Section C - Presuming you've kept your claim under £5,000, you should tick 'Yes'.
• Section D - Leave this blank.
• Section E - Tick 'No' in all the boxes.
• Section F - Consult your diary and fill this in appropriately.
• Section G -  Here you are asked to clarify the claim if necessary. It is best to get the claim right in the first place, but it is doubtful that an individual with no legal representation (a 'litigant in person') will be penalised for doing this. If you do clarify something at this point, send a copy of the Allocation Questionnaire to the defendant (the bank or card company), so that it can't complain at a later date that it's been ambushed.
  
  Then, which is new, list any information that you want the defendant to disclose. You might write something like this: "The claimant would like the defendant to disclose how it calculated its fees for exceeding overdraft limits." That should get the banks sweating!
• Section H - Tick 'Yes' and attach the fee.

And don't forget to sign and date it!