CAB Getting your cash back for cancelled holiday
I had a holiday booked last year through a travel agent and agreed to accept a credit note when it couldn’t go ahead.
I’m now wondering whether I should have insisted on getting my money back, as I’m worried that the company I booked with may go bust before I get a chance to use my credit note.
Where flights and holidays couldn’t go ahead due to coronavirus you would have had the right to a refund rather than a credit note.
However, the good news is that ATOL have now agreed to protect customers, and will cover the value of credit notes issued by companies who are members of ABTA.
This protection will apply to any bookings from 10/03/2021 where the bookings were cancelled for coronavirus reasons, and the ATOL protection will last until 30/09/2022.
My next door neighbour’s children have been getting into my garden and have caused a lot of damage to my plants.
My neighbour and I don’t get on, so I want to know my rights before I contact them. Do they need to buy me replacement plants?
If your neighbour’s children have caused damage to your property, your rights may be limited.
The first step is to approach the parents and ask them to pay the cost of repair or replacement of the damaged property.
Parents are not technically liable to pay compensation from their own resources for their children’s negligence.
Negligence is damage caused by the failure to act with reasonable care.
However, they may be liable if it is proved they failed to take reasonable care to ensure that their children do not cause harm to the property of others.
While not something we would necessarily recommend, the law does allow for a child to be sued for negligence.
Courts will take the age of the child into account when deciding whether their behaviour was negligent, and there is of course little point suing someone who has no way of making payment.
If this is an ongoing problem it may be worth using Renfrewshire
Council’s Neighbour Mediation Service (0300 300 0380).
My daughter gets Disability Living Allowance (DLA) for a child at the moment, but she will turn 16 at the end of this year.
We think she will then have to apply for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) like an adult and are worried that this will be too much for her.
Disability benefits like Child DLA and PIP are gradually being transferred to Social Security Scotland (starting this autumn with the Child Disability Payment).
As a result, there are already some different rules for Scotland to the rest of the UK. One of the differences is that children who reach the age of 16 after August 31, 2021 will not need to claim PIP until they are turning 18.
This will apply even if there is a change of circumstances that means the child might be due a higher rate of benefit.
Remember, you should always seek advice if you are considering asking for disability benefits to be looked at again, as awards can go down as well as up.