You can ask any organisation for the information it holds about you. It is normally free, and the organisation normally has a month to answer. Some of the records below came back that way. Others were filed in court and read out at a public hearing. None of them was written for the public, and that is what makes them worth reading.

6 February 2020. Santander answered a complaint. It upheld part of it, including that its own agent “didn’t make it clear the complaint was closed”, and declined the rest. Then it set out where the road ended: “we do not agree based on the evidence available, and the Financial Ombudsman Service have also reviewed the case. Therefore if you wish to pursue this further, this would need to be done through the courts.” The same letter gave six months to go to the ombudsman, counted from the date of the letter.

3 April 2020. Santander’s solicitors, Shoosmiths, wrote: “We can confirm our client has not received any offer to settle from 28 January 2020.”

7 April 2020. Inside the bank, two business days later: “[the solicitor] has recommended we do not provide a further response and leave Shoosmiths to continue to any further issues raised about mis-selling allegations, failure to respond to the complaint or offers to settle the mortgage.”

9 April 2020. The same solicitors wrote: “We can confirm that our client does have your correspondence dated 28 January 2020 and we apologise for this oversight in our previous correspondence. We write to confirm that your offer is rejected.”

9 November 2021. Santander wrote: “You have stated that Shoosmiths advised on 3rd of April 2020 that we had not received an offer from you. Although I appreciate that this information is incorrect, we cannot be held responsible for any information passed to you by a third party.”

The mis-selling complaint in those letters was not pursued at trial, and nothing on this page says it was right. What the records show is the route, not the merits.

4 and 14 October 2019. The family’s Member of Parliament wrote to the council’s chief executive asking for a meeting, and wrote again ten days later.

15 October 2019. The council’s head of complaints directed that it be logged “on iCasework as a ME with the usual response timescales”. A ME is a member enquiry. It is not a complaint, and it does not start a complaint.

15 October 2019. The council classified the enquiry in its own system. Against root cause it recorded: “Failure to deliver a service”.

23 and 31 October 2019. A director replied to the MP, and a meeting was arranged for 6 November.

A letter was written and a meeting was held. No complaint stage was opened by that route.

Nothing in either record shows anybody behaving improperly, and this campaign alleges nothing of the kind. That is the point. One road closed because a firm had answered and the ombudsman had looked; one closed because an approach was handled as an enquiry rather than a complaint. Both closed by design, in writing, without anyone deciding to be unfair.

When every free road is closed, the only road left is the one run under rule 1.1.

Every civil case in England and Wales is run under one rule, rule 1.1 of the Civil Procedure Rules. It tells the court to deal with cases justly and at proportionate cost. Cost is in that sentence. The word fairly appears once, lower down, and only so far as is practicable.

That is why this campaign calls it the optional fairness rule. One word, added in two places, makes fairness part of the objective the court must meet, and not a thing to be reached when it can be.