Barclays cut my expat mother off from vital care home funds

I hold lasting power of attorney (LPA) and manage the finances for my 85-year-old mother, who lives with dementia in a Spanish care home. For the last seven months we have been unable to access her money to pay her care home fees, because Barclays has suspended her account.

I became aware of this last December after receiving an error message when trying to log on. When I rang I was told the account was dormant. I visited a branch with my LPA documents and was told that the account could not be reinstated and that I would need a signed letter from my mother before the funds could be transferred. I don’t believe Barclays had any right to insist on this, but with more than £450,000 locked in the account I had to comply.

My mother’s vascular dementia meant she found signing the documents extremely distressing. The requested documents were sent in February and I was told it would take up to 16 weeks to resolve. I’ve heard nothing since. My mother’s pension and share dividends go into this dormant account.

She has a secondary account with a Spanish bank from which we have had to pay her care-home fees during this impasse. There’s now only enough left for one more month. There is a risk that, if she is unable to pay the fees, she’ll be evicted. We’re tearing our hair out.
MJ, Gwynedd

Barclays has form when it comes to cutting elderly widows off from their money. In March I reported on a 91-year-old who was unable to pay her bills after her account was shut down. The reasons for the closures differ, but the underlying incompetence and insouciance are disturbingly similar. Your mother fell victim to EU rules which, post-Brexit, require UK banks to apply for separate licences to serve customers in each EU country. To save themselves the hassle and cost, many banks simply closed expats’ accounts. Barclays shut the last of its in December.

Why were you not informed? Barclays says that three warning letters were sent digitally to your mother, in accordance with the preference settings on the account, which is why you did not see them.

There is a set process for claiming the balance from a defunct account, but a succession of errors stymied your efforts. First you were told that the account was dormant, rather than closed. This meant you were directed to follow the wrong process, which got you nowhere.

Next, branch staff failed to acknowledge your LPA documents, which meant your mother was put through the stress of signing a letter of authority.

Barclays only admitted these blunders after I got in touch and it took a media prod to get it to release the funds – just in time to pay the next instalment of care home fees. It has now paid £250 “for the distress and inconvenience” and has confirmed it will pay interest lost on account during the seven-month impasse. A spokesperson said: “We are very sorry for the level of service [MJ] received while trying to recover the funds from his mother’s account, which had been closed as she resides outside the UK.” It is worth knowing that if a banking complaint is unresolved after eight weeks you can complain to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

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