In May 2002, three people with severe learning disabilities and some degree of challenging behaviour moved into a bungalow Yorkshire, Northern England. The three people were sharing the property, which is owned by a Housing Association on the basis of multiple occupancy with individual tenancy rights. The tenancy rights gave them sole occupancy of a bedroom and shared use of lounge, dining room, kitchen and bathroom facilities. The property has gardens to the front and back.

The tenants have responsibility for paying the rent to the property and all utility services of gas, water and electricity. All other expenditure of food and personal requirements is their own responsibility.
Each tenant receives a range of personal benefits to cover their living expenses and a separate housing benefit to cover the cost of rent, maintenance, decorations and a contribution to personal support and advice on housing matters only.

To enable the tenants to budget for their various living costs, Real Life Options, as their housing support service, sought to help them establish a personal bank account each and a house account (shared). Each persons individual benefits and any other income would be paid directly by the various agencies into their personal bank account on a monthly basis. From this income, each tenant would budget to transfer to the general account (shared) a specific amount each month to meet the cost of rent, utilities etc. Each tenant with the support of a member of our staff team visited a national bank to establish a personal bank account. The branch of the bank refused to allow the tenants to establish a bank account. The bank required that they produce two pieces of evidence which had to include a utility bill in their name.

Because the tenants had previously, either lived in their parental home or within an institution, this meant that they were unable to meet these requirements. The bank therefore refused to allow them to establish a bank account.
In doing so the bank was essentially discriminating against the tenants because of their disability. All the tenants were adults of the ages of 30+. The bank stated that the requirements were a direct result of government legislation requiring them to ensure that account holders were who they said they were! This requirement was a direct results of concerns about "money laundering" by either criminal groups or terrorist organisations.

 
We utilised information obtained by a Local Authority Social Services Care Manager who had contacted the Minister for Health and obtained a letter indicating to the bank that they should not discriminate on grounds of disability.
This correspondence was given to the bank. The bank also stated that the local Manager in contacting the banks legal department had attempted to imply that because the men had learning disability they did not have the capacity to manage their own financial affairs. The bank stated that the service provider should act as a "guarantor" for the tenants. In this contact they claimed that the level of intellectual "functioning" of the tenants was less than that of a seven year old child.

 
Although this bank (through pressure from their corporate section) resolved the matter it became apparent that it had not been dealt with as a matter of principle within this banking network.

This year we opened a similar scheme and experienced similar difficulties.
We invited the bank to provide us with a written statement as to their reasons in refusing to provide banking facilities. However, they did not do this.

Our organisation holds its accounts with the bank and on that basis we approached Senior Managers within the corporate banking system and informed them of this issue which had arisen through their retail departments. Following a period of four months of debate with the bank we expressed our concerns at continued delay in providing banking facilities.

 
We indicated to the bank that if they did not withdraw their decision and provide banking facilities we would transfer our accounts to another bank.

Following pressure from the corporate sector of the bank, the retail department and legal department withdrew their objections and arranged for banking facilities to be provided. The bank did not provide any reasonable explanation of why they had refused to provide banking facilities nor any apology to our tenants.

We came to the view that the issues raised were:

• Lack of understanding of the needs of people with intellectual disabilities;

   

• An inability by a national bank to provide flexibility in the establishment and management of bank accounts;

   

• Internal management issues that mean that different branches adapt the same approach because the information that is provided to them by their legal compliance department is not correct and there is no mechanism within their retail section to challenge decisions and give advice that will not discriminate on grounds of disability.

   

Organisation: Real Life Options, Pegasus Lodge, Normaton Address: Churchill House, 29 Mill Hill, Pontefact, West Yorkshire Country: England Tel: +44 (1977)/781800 Fax: +44 (1977)/795361 Website: http://www.reallifeoptions.org

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