£44m in illegal charges in one year.

This is the response I received from the Ministry of Justice following a Freedom of Information request I made concerning the number of claims issued by Restons and the firm I worked for, Weightmans:

Year 2002 / 2003 2003 / 2004 2004 / 2005 2005 / 2006 2006 / 2007 2007 / 2008 2008 / 2009 2009 / 2010
Claims issued by Restons 2733 3369 3460 5761 9004 6757 6511 8992
Claims issued by Weightmans 2362 1137 2307 1646 2981 2373 17475 14821

Restons had other clients but for the year 2006/2007 Weightmans, which didn’t,  issued 2,981 claims on behalf of HSBC (HFC). This firm said in Chambers legal directory for the same period that they only issued proceedings in 20% of cases. This means they were instructed in 14,905 cases. At an average collection charge of £1,500 that means that £22,357,500 in illegal charges was added in that year. I know Restons were instructed in a similar number of cases because the bank said they wanted to compare us “apples for apples”, so £44,715,000 in illegal charges were added in the period 2006/7. The figures increased in following years.