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Contact with chambers should be made through the Practice Management Team. They are happy to discuss client requirements and provide further information on such matters as the expertise and experience of individual members, fees, working practices and languages spoken. We have members able to work in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Greek and Chinese (Mandarin).

Outside working hours, a member of our team is always available to be contacted on matters of an urgent nature. Contact should be made using the Chambers main number or email.

For our Singapore office, for client enquiries please contact our BD Director, Asia Pacific, Lara Quie and for all other queries please contact Lynn Quek. Out of office hours calls will automatically be diverted to our clerking team in London.

London

20 Essex Street
London
WC2R 3AL

enquiries@twentyessex.com
t: +44 20 7842 1200

Singapore

28 Maxwell Road
#02-03 Maxwell Chambers Suites
Singapore 069120

singapore@twentyessex.com
t: +65 62257230

Contact

Contact with chambers should be made through the Practice Management Team. They are happy to discuss client requirements and provide further information on such matters as the expertise and experience of individual members, fees, working practices and languages spoken. We have members able to work in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Greek and Chinese (Mandarin).

Outside working hours, a member of our team is always available to be contacted on matters of an urgent nature. Contact should be made using the Chambers main number or email.

For our Singapore office, for client enquiries please contact our BD Director, Asia Pacific, Lara Quie and for all other queries please contact Lynn Quek. Out of office hours calls will automatically be diverted to our clerking team in London.

London

20 Essex Street
London
WC2R 3AL

enquiries@twentyessex.com
t: +44 20 7842 1200

Singapore

28 Maxwell Road
#02-03 Maxwell Chambers Suites
Singapore 069120

singapore@twentyessex.com
t: +65 62257230

08/06/2016

Mark Alexander v West Bromwich Mortgage Company Ltd

This is an archived article, and some links may not work. Contact us if you have any questions.

Michael Ashcroft QC appeared for the successful Appellant ("the Borrower") in this high profile representative action affecting over 6,200 policyholders of the West Bromwich Mortgage Company Ltd ("the Lender"). The dispute concerned buy-to-let "tracker" mortgages and concerned the circumstances in which the Lender could vary the applicable rates of interest and terminate the mortgage contracts. Accepting Mr Ashcroft's arguments (and disagreeing with the analysis of Teare J. below and previous decisions by the Financial Ombudsman Service), the Court of Appeal held that clauses in the Lender's standard mortgage conditions, upon which it sought to rely to vary the applicable rates of interest in its discretion and as giving rise to a right to terminate the mortgage contracts on 1 month's notice, were inconsistent with central terms of the mortgage offers and were therefore not incorporated into the contracts. The judgment of Hamblen LJ contains a very clear analysis of the proper approach as a matter of contractual construction to questions of inconsistency and inconsistency clauses. The decision is also understood to be of wide significance in relation to "tracker" mortgages more generally, since several other lenders have apparently sought to vary "tracker" rates, otherwise than strictly in accordance with changes to the underlying base rate, relying upon broadly similar clauses to those that the Lender sought to invoke in this case.

Judgment

 


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