The Mortgage Works (UK) Plc · DRN-6163734

The complaint Ms B complains that The Mortgage Works (UK) Plc (“TMW”) accused her of living in the Let To Buy property she has mortgaged with it. Ms B said that was completely unjust. She told us she’d found this very stressful and unsettling. What happened Ms B has a Let To Buy (“LTB”) mortgage with TMW. She had moved out of her old home, remortgaging that with TMW, and moved to a new home. She retained her old home as an investment and now rents it out. But Ms B told us TMW had accused her of living in the property that she now rents out. She said TMW had written a very heavy-handed email, accusing her of breaching the terms of her mortgage. Ms B said she asked TMW for proof of its accusations, but she said TMW wouldn’t provide her with any details. Ms B said this had taken time to sort out, and caused her considerable stress. She said she was concerned she had a breach noted on her mortgage account, when she had done nothing wrong. She said she still wanted TMW to show her the evidence it had relied on to make this accusation, she wanted the breach removed from her account and a written apology, as well as reassurance that TMW would change its policies so other customers didn’t have to go through this. Ms B then wrote to us again to say that although TMW held the right address for her, it had changed this to a different house on the same street. She said a mortgage statement had been sent there, instead of to her. TMW had already responded to this concern, so our investigator was able to consider it as part of this case. TMW said it gets regular reports from a Credit Reference Agency (“CRA”) about borrowers who rent out their mortgaged properties. Those reports check whether there is any reason to think the borrower might be living in the property themselves. Living in a property which is financed through an LTB mortgage is a breach of the mortgage terms. So when TMW is alerted to concerns, it writes to the borrower, asking them to show where they are living. TMW said it had written to Ms B to say it would like to see evidence that she wasn’t living in the mortgaged property, in July and August 2025. The letters were asking for a recent utility bill at her residential address, bank statements showing that address, and a tenancy agreement for the let property. TMW placed a hold on Ms B’s mortgage, so she wouldn’t be able to do things like apply for a new mortgage deal until she sent the requested information. TMW now understands Ms B didn’t get these letters, but they were sent to the right address. TMW didn’t know they hadn’t been received, but as it hadn’t received any response it then emailed Ms B in September, asking her again to provide the evidence that she wasn’t living in the mortgaged property. TMW said Ms B told it she was very upset to be accused in this way, and asked it to provide proof of its concerns, but she didn’t initially supply the documentation TMW had asked for. TMW said it had explained why it needed this information, and why it thought Ms B could be living in the property – there seemed to be credit agreements which used her name and this

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old address, and her entry on the electoral roll there was quite recent. Ms B did then supply requested documentation, and TMW said the restriction was removed from her mortgage. It has explained that none of the searches which are done to check a borrower’s residence would leave a mark on their credit files. And it had referred her to its policies on using data, explaining how it would use both the electoral roll and credit file information. It had forwarded the relevant mortgage terms to her, so she could see the conditions included that she’s not allowed to live in that property. TMW said it couldn’t send the credit file report to Ms B, because that had other people’s data on it, but she could ask the CRAs for a copy of her credit file. When Ms B complained about her address being changed, TMW said it did think it had made a mistake here. It said it had a programme of checking addresses for new customers, and when it checked Ms B’s address, it made a manual error in inputting her address. This mistake was rectified a month after it was made. TMW thought a statement had been sent to Ms B’s mortgaged property by mistake, but Ms B said it had been sent elsewhere on her street. TMW said it was sorry, and offered £200 in compensation, which Ms B refused. Ms B said the offer TMW had made wasn’t realistic, considering the breaches included 18 months of the wrong address, as well as an unauthorised address change and now sending very sensitive personal data to an unknown household. She wanted our service to look into things for her. Our investigator thought that the first part of Ms B’s complaint ,about whether she was living in the mortgaged property, shouldn’t be upheld. And he thought that TMW had made a fair offer to resolve the second part of her complaint, about the mistake over her home address. On the question of where Ms B lives, our investigator said TMW had shown our service why it had concerns about that. But those concerns have now been resolved, and TMW had explained why it makes these checks. Our investigator said he could see that it was a term of Ms B’s mortgage with TMW that she would not live in the mortgaged property. And he thought it was fair and reasonable for TMW to put an initial block on Ms B’s account, until the requested information was provided to show Ms B was no longer living there. Our investigator said TMW accepted it had made a mistake over Ms B’s address. It had wrongly changed this to an incorrect house number. This was rectified after about a month. Our investigator thought TMW’s offer of £200 provided a fair and reasonable resolution to that part of Ms B’s complaint. Ms B said that the accusation of living in the mortgaged property was only made because the same bank had failed to update her residential address on one of her linked accounts when she’d moved out of the mortgaged address. So she felt this accusation came from the bank’s own mistake. And Ms B clarified that the misdirected mortgage statement went elsewhere on the same street, not to her tenanted property. Ms B said she was expecting around £1,000 for the data protection breaches. Our investigator said he understood Ms B thought the building society with which TMW has close links was responsible for the concerns TMW had about where she lived. But he said that didn’t seem to be the case from the evidence our service has seen. He suggested Ms B could ask for her credit file, looking for her old address, to see whether any credit agreements were still holding that address. He still thought the compensation TMW had offered was fair and reasonable.

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Ms B said TMW hadn’t shared its evidence with her, and she was concerned about fraud. She said she was worried there were credit applications in her name being made which she was not aware of, at her old address. Ms B said she wanted an ombudsman to consider her complaint, so it was passed to me for a final decision. What I’ve decided – and why I’ve considered all the available evidence and arguments to decide what’s fair and reasonable in the circumstances of this complaint. I’ve reached the same overall conclusion on this complaint as our investigator. I’ll look at each of the issues that Ms B has raised in turn, starting with the questions TMW asked about where she lives. I understand that Ms B was very upset to be asked whether she was living at her old address, and very concerned that TMW thought she’d breached the terms of her mortgage. Ms B said she thought all of this had gone wrong, because a building society that TMW has close links with had also made a mistake about her address, and failed to update it. But this complaint is about TMW, and I can’t look at what this associated building society did, here. However, I am able to say to Ms B that I don’t think that’s what’s caused the concerns here. Ms B bought the property that she now lets out, to live in. Before she decided to let it out, she lived in it herself for some years. So I would expect that Ms B previously had credit agreements in her name at that property, and that she would have been on the electoral roll there until relatively recently. That’s all consistent with Ms B having lived there. Unfortunately, it can take some time for the records of customer credit agreements to update with credit reference agencies. And it’s possible that where customers communicate with a business mostly by email or through an app, they wouldn’t necessarily be alerted to that business still holding an old address. So I don’t think it’s necessarily an indicator of fraud, if Ms B still had some financial links to her old address, around a year after she had moved. However, I can see that it is a condition of her TMW mortgage that Ms B cannot live in the mortgaged property. And given that LTB mortgages are generally agreed on a very different basis to residential mortgages, I don’t think it’s unfair or unreasonable for TMW to check that this condition is being met. I don’t think it has to stop doing that. TMW wrote to Ms B to try to clear up this confusion, and it put an initial hold on her account while it made these checks. Ms B said she felt like she was being accused of doing something wrong. I should be clear – a few of the people TMW writes to when it has concerns about where a borrower lives, will be in breach of their mortgage, requiring further steps. But TMW knows not all of them will. Many, like Ms B, will easily be able to resolve any concerns, by providing the requested information. I understand TMW is now quite satisfied about where Ms B lives. It has removed the hold on her mortgage, so that will not restrict Ms B in any way in future. There’s no black mark on her mortgage account, and no record on her credit file, from TMW’s enquiry. I can also see TMW has signposted Ms B to details of how it will use information about her, in making these checks. I do think TMW has done enough to put things right here, and I don’t think it also has to pay compensation for this part of Ms B’s complaint.

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Turning to the mistake over Ms B’s address, TMW accepts its error here. Ms B says that her statement was sent elsewhere on her street, as part of this mistake. TMW says it was sent to her mortgaged property, long after the mistake over her home address had been corrected. I don’t know which of those things happened, but both sides accept that a mistake was made, and that correspondence which ought to have been sent to Ms B, wasn’t properly addressed. I know Ms B envisaged a much larger payment for this mistake, but I do think that TMW’s offer of £200 in compensation provides a fair and reasonable outcome here. That’s in line with other awards our service makes, and it’s no less than I would have recommended, if TMW hadn’t already made this offer. It doesn’t look like TMW has paid that money, so I’ll ask it to make the payment now, if it hasn’t already. Ms B told us she was also still very concerned, and had found TMW’s enquiries about her address very upsetting. She’s asked TMW to show her information which it says it cannot share, because there’s third party data on the relevant report. I think it may be more helpful for Ms B if she were to obtain her credit report, searching for her previous address as our investigator suggested. If Ms B remains concerned about fraud, then she could also consider recording a protective registration with CIFAS. This will involve a small cost and some inconvenience to Ms B, so it’s up to her whether she would consider that to be worth the additional reassurance that this may offer her. I know Ms B will be disappointed, but I don’t think that TMW has to do more than it has already offered. My final decision My final decision is that The Mortgage Works (UK) Plc must pay Ms B the sum of £200 which it previously offered, if it hasn’t done so already. Under the rules of the Financial Ombudsman Service, I’m required to ask Ms B to accept or reject my decision before 22 April 2026. Esther Absalom-Gough Ombudsman

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