27,000 ‘WHISTLETREE’ MORTGAGE PRISONERS Could be entitled to up to £50,000 in compensation.
JOIN THE CLAIM
If your mortgage has ever been administered by TSB’s ‘Whistletree’ brand, you might be eligible to bring a claim. Click below to join the claim.
JOIN THE CLAIM
WHAT IS THE CLAIM ABOUT?
Harcus Parker acts for mortgage prisoners who are current and former customers of TSB’s ‘Whistletree’ brand, who have been charged very high rates of interest on their domestic mortgages. Eligible claimants could be entitled to £50,000 or more in compensation.
Whistletree is a trading name of TSB. It was established in 2016 in order to manage 27,000 former Northern Rock mortgages bought by TSB after Northern Rock collapsed and was nationalised. In TSB’s words Whistletree was created as the “new home” for former Northern Rock mortgages.
By refusing to offer new ‘fixed-rate’ deals to its Whistletree customers, TSB ensured that those customers who were unable to remortgage elsewhere were trapped paying TSB’s ‘Whistletree SVR’ (or standard variable rate), which was almost twice as high as TSB’s SVR.
Some of TSB’s Whistletree customers initially took out a ‘Together Mortgage’ with Northern Rock. These products were a combined mortgage and personal loan which, if the mortgage was transferred to another lender without repaying the personal loan, would have an interest rate of up to 13%.
You can read more about the history of Northern Rock’s collapse and the creation of mortgage prisoners by clicking here.
THE CLAIMS SO FAR
The first hearing in the Whistletree claim took place in October 2023. Following the hearing the court ordered that there should be a trial of preliminary issues. The preliminary issues trial will settle certain points of law that are disputed between the parties. We anticipate that the hearing will be listed for some time in, or after, June 2024.
27,000
Whistletree customers could be eligible to join the claim.
£3.3bn
Was paid by TSB to purchase these trapped customers.
£800m
Could be reclaimed from TSB in overpaid interest and compensation.
CAN I CLAIM?
You should be eligible to join the claim if your domestic mortgage is, or has ever been, administered by TSB’s ‘Whistletree’ brand.
We will need some basic information about your mortgage in order to join the claim, and if your mortgage was taken out jointly with another person, you will both need to instruct Harcus Parker in the litigation.
It is difficult to predict the value of claims with certainty, but an average Whistletree customer with a £200,000 mortgage which has not been redeemed could claim approximately £30,000 in overpaid interest. The same person with a ‘Together Mortgage’ could claim around £50,000.
For more information, please contact whistletree@harcusparker.co.uk.
Finally, we are also acting for customers and former customers of Mortgage Agency Services Number Five Limited or ‘MAS 5’. If you have had a mortgage with MAS 5 within the last six years, to find out more and to register, please click here.
WHAT ABOUT OTHER MORTGAGE PRISONERS?
Harcus Parker is providing help for mortgage prisoners who are customers of other lenders including Landmark Limited, NRAM Limited, and Topaz Finance Limited (trading as Heliodor Mortgages) in other prospective claims. You can find out more about those claims (including the landmark mortgage prisoners claims) at www.mortgageprisonerclaims.com; or at www.harcusparker.co.uk/campaigns/mortgage-prisoner-litigation.
We are also working closely with the UK Mortgage Prisoners group, a non-profit organisation which seeks to promote the interests of all mortgage prisoners and which supports Harcus Parker’s mortgage prisoners compensation claims. UK Mortgage Prisoners’ website is here.
We are also in touch with the All Party Parliamentary Group on Mortgage Prisoners (https://www.appgmortgageprisoners.com/; the ‘Mortgage Prisoners APPG’). The Mortgage Prisoners APPG have recently written to the CMA and FCA urging them to introduce a cap on standard variable interest rates charged by lenders to mortgage prisoners. Harcus Parker is supportive of this initiative.
CHARITY PARTNERSHIP
Harcus Parker is proud to be partnering with Support Through Court, a charity whose aim is to provide practical and emotional support to vulnerable individuals who find themselves facing court alone. Support Through Court aim to ensure that people can represent themselves with dignity and can navigate the complex court process to achieve the fairest possible hearing. To date, Support Through Court have supported tens of thousands of people through the court process. This invaluable work is ever more important in a time of diminishing legal aid and spiralling living costs which contribute to financial instability. Such instability is a significant contributor to court actions such as debt recovery actions, housing repossessions and relationship breakdowns – challenges which can affect anyone, but which are likely to be all too familiar to mortgage prisoners.
You can read about the charity, and the work they do on their website, available here.
Harcus Parker will donate 2% of the Solicitor’s Fee to Support Through Court in the event of a successful outcome of the Whistletree Mortgage Prisoner Litigation.
Mortgage Prisoners are homeowners who pay high interest rates on their mortgages without the opportunity to switch to a cheaper and more-competitive mortgage with a different lender. Whistletree Mortgage Prisoners are homeowners whose former Northern Rock mortgages were sold to TSB in 2016. They are effectively trapped by their mortgages and have no choice but to pay the interest rates set by TSB. TSB treats its customers who have what it calls ‘Whistletree’ mortgages differently from its other customers, and charges them higher rates of interest. TSB offers new mortgages through Whistletree but, historically, these have been more expensive than equivalent TSB mortgages.
People can be Mortgage Prisoners in different ways. For example, portfolios of former Northern Rock mortgages are also held by inactive lenders, that is to say, lenders which do not offer their existing customers new mortgage deals and do not seek to take on new customers.
Similarly, those homeowners who have ‘interest only’ mortgages can sometimes be more acutely affected by the high interest rates charged by lenders. These interest only mortgage prisoners can struggle even to pay the interest on their mortgage, with no obvious way of ever repaying the capital sum owed.
The claim we will bring will allege that your lender has treated you unfairly and that your lender’s actions have been in breach of the express or implied terms of your mortgage contract. In addition, some claimants (those with ‘Together Mortgages’) may be eligible to bring other claims such as claims under the Consumer Credit Act that the mortgage agreement constituted an unfair lending relationship.
TSB Bank PLC. It is an important feature of the claims that ‘Whistletree’ is not a separate entity at all, but is simply a trading name of TSB.
Harcus Parker will act on a damages-based agreement (or ‘DBA’). This means that in general we will not charge you anything unless and until your claim succeeds. If it does, we will charge a fee equal to 35% of any compensation you receive. You will also need to pay (from any compensation you receive) your fair share of any third party costs Harcus Parker incurs on your behalf in order to bring the claims. The DBA itself is available to read by clicking ‘Join the Claim’ at the top of this page. It is privileged and confidential, so we ask you only to read it if you are doing so in order to decide whether to instruct Harcus Parker, because you believe you are eligible to bring a claim.
It is difficult to estimate, but we estimate that a person with a £200,000 mortgage that has not been redeemed could be able to claim approximately £30,000. The same person with a ‘Together Mortgage’ could claim around £50,000. In other words, between 10% and 20% of the initial value of your mortgage.
When you instruct Harcus Parker through this website, you authorise a committee of claimants, who are homeowners and are (or were) Whistletree Mortgage Prisoners like yourself, to give us instructions in relation to your claim. We ask you to delegate your authority in this way because we consider that is the only way we can effectively manage and progress the thousands of claims belonging to the borrowers who have instructed us. It would be both impractical and costly for us to take individual instructions from each of you, and it is not reflective of how claims such as this are normally brought before the Courts.
Please let us know if you are interested in becoming a member of the committee by emailing whistletree@harcusparker.co.uk.
By clicking ‘Join the Claim’ at the top of this page, filling out the short questionnaire and agreeing to Harcus Parker’s engagement terms.
