ELTA Newsletter May 2004

I imagine you have seen the extensive media coverage that we have achieved over the last few weeks. As a consequence, the number of WPAs who have registered with ELTA has increased rapidly. A big thank-you to Ann Berry and Tim Balkwill who have been administering the registration process, which has absorbed a lot of their time and energy.

You will be interested to know that as of 31^st May, we have some 1,948 Policyholders who are registered on the ELTA membership database, of whom 897 have completed the ELTA Questionnaire and 504 have also completed the documentation and sent in cheques to Clarke Willmott.

Thank you to all of you who have sent in their information and cheques to Clarke Willmott. We have reached our first benchmark, which was to have enough information to send to Counsel so that he can prepare his advice for the ELTA Legal Action committee. This committee - Nicholas Oglethorpe, Nicolas Bellord, Tim Balkwill and myself, together with Clarke Willmott are meeting with Counsel in Bristol on 9 June. He will advise us on the precise aspects of our claim that he thinks we should pursue against the Society. We will advise you of these in due course.

For those ELTA members who have NOT yet sent in their material to Clarke Willmott maybe in the hope that the AGM of the Society would present another choice, I imagine you will now realise that while the Society claims to be pursuing the option of encouraging the Parliamentary Ombudsman to do some more research and produce another report, it will not help us, the WPAs of Equitable Life. Some estimates suggest that the PO might not even complete her report until 2006 or later so by the time the report is produced we would all be time-barred from taking action against the Society.

ELTA members are unlikely to be able to ‘sit on the fence’ and join in the litigation at a later date if they see a favourable wind blowing. I think you will be sorely disappointed if you believe you can wait and see if we succeed and then join a subsequent legal action. It is unlikely that anyone else will be willing to run another action even if the time bar did not almost certainly make such an action impossible. The ‘Late Joiners’ who didn’t join ELJAG’s successful action last year are kicking themselves now.  

As I have said before, time is not on our side and sending a cheque for £100 and all the forms to Clarke Willmott, as soon as possible, could be a small price to pay for making sure that your details are registered and you can be included in the action before the proceedings are issued.

If you are finding the task of copying all those files and filling forms daunting or difficult, get yourself registered NOW and do the copying later, as long as you make sure that CW have your material within the next 3 to 4 weeks. I know from my own experience that is a time consuming task, but you will be encouraged to hear that 504 of our members have already managed it!  The more we can do for ourselves, the less costs we will incur in pursuing our objectives.

Also, do not forget that the more of us that sign up, the stronger our negotiating position will be.

I would also like to mention the sterling work being done by other committee members, Thelma Haile, Michael Nassim and Bill Davies, who are working on parallel activities that all lead to our common goal of obtaining redress for the losses suffered by With-Profits Annuitants.

Regards and thanks for all your support

Peter Scawen

31 May 2004