London House News

As mentioned last month, we are now pleased to confirm that we have opened two new Franchised offices. 

Chris Metalle and Chris Richards have joined us as the Franchise Owners for South East London. Chris M has a Corporate Finance Director background with such firms as BZW and Deloitte & Touche whilst Chris R was formerly a Chartered Engineer and latterly held senior positions with both Whitbread Plc and Cap Gemini Plc. They will be covering the SE postcode area.

 Meanwhile, Deborah Braithwaite has joined us as Franchise Owner for Bolton & Oldham. Deborah's recent background is as an HR Manager with Greater Manchester Police where she led a team of 10. Her earlier career included over 10 years retail experience mainly in the construction industry at Director level. Deborah will be covering the BL and OL postcodes. 

Welcome to you all. 

Interest in becoming a Franchise Owner with London House remains very strong. We have training booked for November for a further two Franchise Owners. More information on this next month. 

You asked us

"As part of my information on an individual, I have a National Insurance number. Can you do anything with this?" 

In a word - No. It is illegal and in breach of Data Protection rules for us to use this information for enquiries. However, it can on a rare occasion be valuable for confirming a persons identification. The same also applies to Passport numbers.

Focus on......Road Traffic Accident Reports

A service that some of you may not know we provide is that of RTA reports. We are receiving an increasing number of requests for this service and all of our managers are experienced at preparing details of the scene of an accident which can be produced in Court if necessary. We are qualified to prepare plans and reports and take a series of detailed photographs to be produced with those plans as evidence. This can be difficult and complex work and in some cases the smallest detail can make all the difference to the outcome of an insurance claim or court case. We also take detailed statements from witnesses and all parties involved.

Mirror, Signal, Manoeuvre

We have all been there.....a multi lane roundabout, rush hour traffic, and drivers blindly swapping lanes and dodging traffic as if on the dodgems at the fair. We were recently instructed to provide a report on such a scenario to assist the Court in making a judgement for the insurance companies as to who was liable. This accident had occurred at the roundabout that marked the junction with the A11 and the A406 (the start of the North Circular) and was due to drivers being in the wrong lane to make their turning correctly.

As you can imagine, this is a major junction and we had to have our wits about us as we prepared diagrams, took measurements, photographs of all entrances and exits as well as the accident site to provide the information needed by our instructing client. We even had to measure the lanes on the roundabout, no easy task. Whilst the bulk of the work was completed during the day we had to return to the location during the evening to measure the lanes, so that we could stop the traffic while causing as little disruption as possible.

November 2011

The Consumer Credit Counselling Service (CCCS) has revealed that more than one million young Britons are struggling to cope with debt. The report "Debt and the Generations" says that consumers under the age of 40 are struggling against higher built up debts, reducing real incomes and increasing difficulties in saving. The research found that more than 1,000,000 households in the 18-39 age group are already struggling and a further 893,000 are at risk of falling into difficulty. Amongst other things, the report goes into detail about unsecured debt volumes and makes for unpleasant reading.

We acknowledge of course that these are difficult, indeed unusual, times but does lead me again to reiterating my views that the basics of personal finance should and must be taught to our younger generations from an early age. There is nothing wrong in teaching people how to manage their funds and what the consequences of failing to do that may be.