Man steals from boss to pay mortgage

A North West shop worker has admitted to magistrates that he stole money from his boss to make his mortgage payments, the Wirral Globe reports.

John Griffiths, who previously worked for the Carpet Company outlet in Birkenhead, has admitted to stealing £1,821 from the business.

The court heard how the acts were discovered by fellow employees after discrepancies on sales documents were investigated.

It was revealed that, on around fifty occasions, he had made illegal transactions, all in cash.

Mr Griffiths apologised to the court, and said that he felt at the time that he had no choice but to steal, if he was to keep his home. He had been suffering from mortgage problems for some time.

The newspaper added that he had admitted to having “let himself down”.

He has been sentenced to 180 hours community work and is to pay £500 towards compensation.

Tags: Globe, mortgage payments, John Griffiths, discrepancies, mortgage

Newcastle council admits credit card mix-up

An administrative error by Newcastle City Council has led to up to 54,000 credit and debit card details being made public for over a year.

The security mishap, finally fixed in April this year, was revealed yesterday, as the council conducted an independent security review into its financial dealings.

Data including card numbers, names and addresses – all gold dust to fraudsters – were revealed, as a file of council transactions with local residents, including council tax, rent and parking fines, was uploaded to an insecure server.

Scant reassurance for local rate payers comes with the information that the file was encrypted, making it more difficult to read.

An exact figure for those exposed will come as the error is more fully investigated by an internal review.

“We very much regret that this situation has developed”, Newcastle council chief executive Ian Stratford said.

“We would stress that there has been no indication of any fraud or loss, and that we spotted this situation through the thoroughness of our own security and checking systems”, he added.

Tags: financial dealings, Audit Commission, rate, names and addresses, Scant

Banks threaten to close accounts as charge row escalates

Account holders who have complained at seemingly excessive bank charges have been threatened with having their accounts shut down.

A study from This is Money, revealed by the website yesterday, showed that over one in eight of those who have tried to reclaim excessive bank fees have been subjected to the threat.

Extra charging by banks is a hugely controversial subject with British consumers. It was revealed last week that a total of £200 million has been paid back by banks so far this year, as customers assert their rights.

This is Money also claimed at the time that around 500 claims a day were being received at some banks, necessitating extra staff being brought in.

Regarding the latest controversy, chief executive of the Banking Code Standards Board Roger Skinner told the website: “Banks are allowed to close down accounts for commercial reasons. But they must also treat fairly any customers who are experiencing financial difficulties.”

According to the Banking Code, to which the banks in question are signatories, customers must be dealt with fairly when in financial difficulty.

Industry watchdog the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) extended its investigation into bank charges earlier this year. It is slated to report back in the autumn.

Tags: excessive bank charges, staff, total, fair, financial difficulty.Industry watchdog, latest controversy, threat.Extra charging, Banking Code

Pets in floods covered by home insurance

Household pets left without a home temporarily in the recent floods could well have their stays in alternative accommodation covered by household insurance.

The advice was given by insurance provider Norwich Union today.

A spokesperson for the insurer said that “we will pay, as part of the alternative accommodation, under a claim for flood, for reasonable accommodation expenses for you and/or your pet… they can put them in the kennel or someplace and their building insurance will pay for that.”

However, he added that for any injuries sustained by pets to be covered, separate animal insurance would probably have had to have been previously taken out: “If your pet is injured, that is what pet insurance is there for.”

The insurance industry will be hit hard by the recent floods. The Association of British Insurers (ABI) now estimates that last month’s storm damage will lead to £2 billion in claims.

The cost of the most recent floods is also currently pegged by the association at hundreds of millions of pounds, and rising.

Tags: animal, cost, insurers, taken out, reasonable accommodation, kennel, animal insurance, reasonable accommodation expenses

Nationwide house price report shows slowdown

Nationwide house price report shows slowdown

Further evidence for a rapidly-cooling house price market comes today, with the release of the monthly report from lenders Nationwide.

Seasonally adjusted, house prices made a gain of 0.1 per cent for July – the slowest growth for over a year, and a negation of the gains from the last set of results in June.

The annual rate of inflation is also down, currently standing at 9.9 per cent: numbers had been in the double digits for the last three months.

Nationwide starkly stated that the “risk of monetary overkill” looms large over the housing market.

The lender also welcomed the government’s housing green paper, which proposes that more affordable homes be built; yet “as the recent flooding shows, the challenges ahead are substantial”, it adds.

Many analysts will be surprised by the results, with Reuters reporting that a 0.5 per cent gain and an annual reading of 10.6 per cent had been predicted.

Tags: Real estate, housing market, Nationwide house price, government, growth, Toronto, evidence, slowdown

Super-Prime London Prices Shoot Upwards

The price of houses at the very top of the London property market achieved record growth in June. Research by estate agent Knight Frank shows record growth of 3.1%, which is the fastest growth in a month since the agency began its records in 1976. It also found that the annual rate for the same market was 34.5% in June, which is the largest figure for a years seen since 1979.

Those properties seeing the largest rises were between £1m and £2m, and those valued at over £4 million. House prices in the latter bracket have gone up by an amazing 43% in the last twelve months. The areas where house prices have gone up the most are SW3 and SW10, with a 40% rise on houses valued at over a million in the last year. Properties over a million pounds represent 7% of the London property market.

It looks as though prime London is having an almost unstoppable surge in house price inflation, but deeper research actually shows that the highest growth is at the very top end of the market – super-prime London. For example, the growth of properties valued at just below a million in the same areas had slowed down, no doubt under influence from recent interest rate rises and other economic factors putting the squeeze on homebuyers. A slowdown for super-prime London house prices would probably mean that there was a huge economic problem on a global scale as many buyers are foreigners.

Further out of central London, areas like Hampstead, Wapping and Wimbledon have seen growth of 11.4% in the first six months of 2007, giving annual growth of 21.8%. These don’t match up to super-prime increases, but still show superior growth to the broader London house market.

Knight Frank’s assessment is that the normal house market slowdown in the summer will be cooled even further by other economic factors, but super-prime central London will still have annual growth of around 25% come December.

Meanwhile it has been calculated that the cost of an extra bedroom in a large property in London is £161,221. That figure is £20,000 higher than the cost of an average home in Scotland. The figure is worked out from the average price of a three-bedroom property in the capital as £396,387, and the average price of a four-bedroom home is £557,608.

It is such a difference that forecasts are that London homeowners will look for more ways to improve or increase the size of their existing property such as an extension or loft conversion, rather than seek to move.

The difference between and one-bedroom property and a two-bedroom property is much less, at an average of £89,751. In London there are currently around 13,600 two-bedroom properties up for sale, but less than 6,000 one-bedroom properties. Such as shortgage of smaller properties is a concern for first-time buyers as that key difference in price for an extra bedroom would evidently be a showstopper for many new buyers. It is unlikely that this situation will ease with London market continuing to push upwards.

Tom Smith
26th July 2007

Tags: interest, Mortgages, increase, prime, inflation, prices

Insurance cover could become fairer

New regulations and changes to the law could result in greater fairness for consumers that have various types of health insurance cover, as it means that there will be less of a chance of the insurance company being able to deny the claim.

In the past a number of insurance companies have been slated for denying claims from policyholders because of information that was or was not given at the time that the policy was taken out, leaving the policyholder with no way to claim on his or her policy.

Plans have been proposed by the Law Commission, which looks at the way that laws are applied in cases such as these, and if everything goes through successfully it means that insurance companies will not be able to refuse to payout on a claim because of lack of information provided when the policy was taken out by the claimant. Life and critical illness insurance policyholders may benefit the most, as the level of denied claims in these areas is quite high.

One spokesman from the Law Commission stated: ‘We have sought to bring insurance law up-to-date to reflect the reasonable expectations of insurers, policyholders and intermediaries. Our overriding objective has been to achieve fairness between both parties to an insurance contract, while recognising different levels of information about the insured risk and different bargaining strengths.’

However, insurance companies plan to fight against the changes. According to an official from the Association of British Insurers: ‘In effect, our members are operating to these standards anyway and are not forcing claimants to go to the Ombudsman needlessly. Many insurers have already made clear that they will not decline critical illness or life claims when the information that was not disclosed has nothing to do with the final claim.’

Tom Smith
26th July 2007

Tags: consumer, companies, health, policy, Insurance, holders, changes

Further disappointment for ING Direct customers

ING Direct customers are facing increased disappointment when it comes to their savings, with ING once again failing to pass on the interest rate rise that was applied by the Bank of England.

The online savings account from ING Direct now pays 5% to savers, which is well below the best rate savings account and stands at 0.75% less than the base interest rate. The account initially attracted over a million customers when it advertised its impressive interest rates in 2003, but since then ING has come under fire for leaving interest rates to stagnate despite a series of rate rises.

The Websaver account from ING will also see interest rates remain static, at 5.5%. The rate on this savings account was actually higher than this initially, opening at 5.65%, but was cur to 5.5% before the interest rate rise in May of this year. Since this time the interest rate has not gone up, despite Bank of England rises of 0.25% in both May and July. ING Direct was hugely popular amongst savers previously, but has lately received a great deal of negative press over its refusal to pass on interest rate rises.

According to recent figures customers of ING Direct have taken over £3 billion worth of savings from their accounts and placed the money with other banks as a result of poor interest rates based on the current base rate. Although interest rates in the UK have gone from 4.5% to 5.75% in the past year through a series of five interest rate rises, the interest rate on the ING Direct savings account has risen by only 0.5% in this time.

According to ING Direct other banks get around this by offering lower rates on other accounts. One official stated: ‘If these savings providers had to pay all of their customers our 5% it would cost them a fortune and they wouldn’t be able to afford to keep offering their headline grabbing accounts.’

Tom Smith
26th July 2007

Tags: base, england, customers, rates, bank

FTBs saving longer for their deposits

First-time buyers (FTBs) are saving for “around five years” to put down a deposit for their home, Your Mortgage said yesterday.

FTBs are also relying on loans from parents more and more, as house prices increase and interest rates rise.

Editor of Your Mortgage Paula John said that the average savings time had increased by a full 11 months in the past year alone.

“Of course, in the light of recent interest rate increases houses are even less affordable for first-time buyers so they are being kicked out of the market altogether”, she said.

Ms John also stated that house prices in London, which have increased by 15 per cent on average in the last year alone, have led FTBs to “lower their sights” and “buy a lot further out”.

According to HousePriceCrash.co.uk, in the last decade numbers of FTBs have shrunk from 55 to 29 per cent of the market.

The Office of National Statistics has also stated that the average price paid by FTBs in the UK has risen by 204 per cent over the same period.

Tags: market, average savings time, first time buyer, Real estate economics, Ms John, house

Savings gulf opens up in UK

New research from Alliance & Leicester, released today, shows that Britons hold six times more in savings and investments than they do in debt.

Property was totted up as being worth £4.3 trillion, savings at £820 billion, with other assets including pensions totalling £1.8 trillion. Total borrowings came to £1.3 trillion.

This impressive ratio – gleaned from figures from the Bank of England, the Council of Mortgage Lenders and the government by the pollster YouGov – hides a financial gulf splitting the populace.

While richer households enjoy the property boom and the strong economy, lower income households are saving less as belts are tightened.

Evidence for this is found in savings figures: while the national average comes to £31,300, almost one third of households have no savings at all – pointing to a big split between the “haves” and the “have nots”.

Alliance and Leicester pointed out a general decrease in savings, with the bank’s head of savings and investments Ewan Edwards pointing out that on average just 2.1 per cent of disposable income is currently saved by Britons, when the figure averages out at 6 per cent over the last decade.

“Britons are increasingly losing the savings habit”, he concluded.

Tags: splitting, belts, income, bank of england, council of mortgage lenders, split, britons, Council

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