Santander blow for Scouts

Ms I.D. writes: I am Treasurer of a local Scout Group, and we have hit a brick wall with Santander, which now has the account we originally opened with the Post Office. As Santander did not offer online dual signatures, which we need, we opened accounts at Lloyds. We left £15,900 deposited with Santander, and unknown to us, Santander decided this was dormant and blocked it. YOU found Santander rejected Gift Aid payments that arrived from Revenue & Customs, and even bounced a cheque that you issued. Things got even worse when Santander told you its records were incomplete, meaning you could not transfer the money to Lloyds. This problem is not unusual with voluntary organisations. Bank signatories move away or retire, and over time contact is lost. The last transaction on your Santander account was in 2016, and the bank made the account dormant a year later, when it received no reply to correspondence.

However, you did manage to supply proof of identity from two of three possible signatories. That should have been enough to reopen the account. I asked staff at the bank’s head office to look into this, and they agree the account should have been revived. It has now been brought back to life, and Santander has added backdated interest plus a further £100 by way of an apology.