So, despite all the cuts that have been made, the Government still need to borrow money and throughout July indebted us all to the tune of £3.8bn. Not good it seems and you’ve got to wonder where this money is going, because it ain’t going to help PPI claims victims what with the £2bn MOJ cut being announced. But, £3.8bn is a damn sight better than the month previous when it borrowed £14.7bn and May, when it had a £18.4bn hand out. The good news is: based on last years figures, the amount borrowed in July has been halved. Yippee. And who do we have to thank for keeping us up to date on the the ConDem bank account? Why, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) of course!

In total, public borrowing for the four months of the financial year so far totals £44.9bn. with the severe drop last month being due to 2nd installment tax payments. The OBR or Office for Budget Responsibility is predicting a total borrowing figure of £149bn for the financial year 2010/11, down from £155bn in the year previous. So we’re going the right way, but with a net debt of £816.2bn or £927.4bn if you include bank bail-outs, we’ve still got quite a journey on our hands. Thank you Johnny Banker you absolute bleedin…

With the amount of claims that we’ve been handling this year, it came as no surprise that there has been a whopping 21,000 PPI claims and complaints made to the The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) since April. This amount includes almost 2,000 in the last week alone, adding to the 114,500 consumer complaints in the last five years.

The level of awareness about mis-sold PPI has increased dramatically recently with more TV advertising appearing and more claims companies setting up. This development within the industry has lead to over half of the 114,500 complaints being made within the last 18 months. But what difference have all these complaints made? Well, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) has so far fined 24 firms in the UK to the tune of £13 million.

As we’ve mentioned frequently over the last 18 months, the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) and The Financial Services Authority (FSA) have been overwhelmed by the number of PPI claims they’ve received. With consumer awareness growing and times harder than ever, the thought of regaining some money has proven to be an attractive prospect for many struggling Brit.

So, to help the FSA deal with the increase in claims, resources were shifted around and the Financial Services Act 2010 gave them the ability to make firms compensate clients through a collective redress scheme. Collective redress is similar to the US class action tool used to combine multiple identical claims into one claim against the alleged offender. This method would save a lot of time and resources and could mean quicker payouts but the power can only be used in against offences that a court or tribunal would find to be failures and the Limitation Act 1980 would limit victims to making their claim within 15 years of the failure occuring.