Wish me luck folks

[jpj]

Does your gas,water,and electricity only add up to £480 a year!!?? I bet its more!
I would fax/write to GT with a sensible ,REALISTIC list of your expenses,
If you do call,make sure you speak to your IP and tell them firmly that their figures are not realistic and your not prepared to accept them.
If they firmly refuse to change them you can always hint at moving to another IP. It would be inconvenient..but not impossible at this stage.
Its your IVA not GTs..your the one paying it!

[Skippy]

If the IVA is only at the proposal stage couldn't someone move to a different IP if they wanted to?

[MelanieGiles]

Thanks Skippy - and apologies to jpj. I had not spotted that the poster was not yet in an IVA. Monday morning fever again - and I have removed my post.

[jellybean]

Thanks for all the advice. I spoke to GT today and asked if they followed CCCS guidelines and apparently they have their own guidelines and it states that £120 is all I can I have for food and housekeeping. If they put more then the IVA may be refused. I am trying to get them to change my I& E to make it a bit more manageable so we will see what happens next.

[OPTIMIST12]

When I spoke with CCCS at the beginning of 2007 they gave me a figure of £140 per month for a single person to cover Food, Toiletries and Cleaning.

[Adam Davies]

Hi Jellybean
Take a second opinion,it's ridiculous that GT are working towards their own expenditure allowances when the banks have signed upto the new protocol and have agreed to use the CCCS guidelines[Max for a single person is £184,guideline £140]
The insolvency world is complicated enough without GT having their own agenda
Regards

[ianmillington]

Frankly I can only agree with the other posters here - it is one thing to be set a tight budget - to a degree, that's what an IVA is about, learning to live within ones means. Where the budget is unrealistic from day 1, which this seems to be, then you are in danger of commencing a 5 year sentence and the IVA proposal may well not be in your interest.

I may be wrong here but could GT have originally advised that you needed to reach the magical 25p in the £ and set your budget accordingly then, when your mortgage went down, they've put all the savings into the IVA?

The CCCS guidelines are tight enough, worse if you live in London. If you are going to budget for even smaller expenses than that, I'm not sure I see it working.

Ian

[jpj]

I agree Ian !
2 months of the year have 5 weeks in them, in those 2 months how can Jellybean buy all food,toiletries,cleaning products etc in London for £28 a week.. wake up GT!

[Adam Davies]

Hi
I'm sure that we had a post some months ago regarding GT and expenditure.The forum member stuck to their guns and GT relented
Regards

[MelanieGiles]

I simply cannot believe that a Grant Thornton partner would expect someone to live on a housekeeping budget of £27 per week. Insist that you speak to your IP directly on this point, and let us know the outcome. I have never seen such a low allowance.

[ianmillington]

Agreed! Something is going sadly wrong here.

Ian

[Adam Davies]

Hi
Why are they squeezing expendture like this ?
Is it to keep dividend proposals unrealistically high to get proposals accepted ?
Is it to increase the income to GT during the IVA where income is based on a percentage of the monthly IVA ?

The sooner The Insolvency Services can gather info on the success or not of live IVAs the better,and we can then see how each IVA provider performs.
We've said it before it's not all about getting the IVA accepted it's all about having it conclude successfully.
Regards

[MelanieGiles]

Andy

I suspect that they do not have such policy at all, but that our poster has just been speaking to an inexperienced case worker.

Time for me and you to arrange a trip to GT? And you can visit our offices in Northern Ireland at the same time!

[MelanieGiles]

Andy - I suspect that they do not have such policy at all, but that an inexperience case worker has got the wrong end of the stick. Time for me and you to arrange a trip to GT? And you can visit our Northern Ireland offices at the same time!

[ianmillington]

Other posts lead me to conclude that you are right Melanie. Perhaps they are struggling under the weight of the new cases they've taken on.