The Barclays IT chaos and a service outage last week left a family “homeless” after their house purchase was derailed.
Civil Servant Paola Mereu, 39, sold the house her and her husband and their two daughters, aged one and seven, lived in at Uxbridge.
The family were meant to purchase their new property in West Sussex on Friday. But major IT glitch at the high street banking giant, which is rivalled by the likes of Lloyds, Santander and Nationwide, hit thousands of customers – including the family.
Mereu said: “We drove down to (West Sussex on Friday) and we had all our things in a moving van and were waiting outside and unfortunately, around one o’clock, my solicitor calls and says Barclays is having some issues and we are unable to complete the sale.
“So we sold our house – we had the money from that – but we were unable to complete the other part of the sale so we are essentially homeless. We waited until five o’clock, Barclays still didn’t fix it, so we literally have no house and it is still not fixed.”
“I am not sure if we will incur extra costs from the people we are buying from because we did not fulfil our part of the contract as the money was meant to go though on Friday,” she added. “It’s crazy, we are hoping the issues are resolved by Monday.
Barclays started to incur problems at approximately 10.30am last Friday, and whatever the problem was, it was not fully fixed until Sunday 2nd February 2025.
“So many property transactions would have been affected by the Barclays banking outage on Friday 30th January 2025,” said the managing director of Convey Law, Janine Wellington. “It became a day of chaos, upset and a reality check of the importance of relying on the banking system in a conveyancing transaction.”
With monies stuck in systems and property chains hopelessly at the peril of the banking system, home movers were literally waiting removal vans, according to Wellington, who has praised conveyancers for the way in which they handled the crisis.
She explained: “What was great on Friday was that the vast majority of our fellow Conveyancers reacted immediately and appropriately, and in their clients’ best interests, and organised their occupation of their new properties, pending the arrival of funds.”
But Wellington was surprised to hear that a few conveyancers were unwilling to move clients into their new homes using the Standard Conditions of Sale 5th Edition. Clause 5.2 allows for early occupation, on a licensee basis, pending completion on the terms set out within that clause.
She added: “I have used Clause 5.2 confidently and successfully (perhaps with the addition of a legal undertaking here and there) on many such occasions during my conveyancing career. The clause covers what is needed to protect the parties to the contract and allows for immediate occupation of the property in such circumstances.
“It was truly inspiring to see the industry come together to ensure that a banking glitch did not spoil the moving day experience for our clients and cause huge inconvenience, upset and additional costs. I dare say that Barclays will have a very large compensation bill to pay for late completions, and in support of those few Conveyancers who didn’t use Clause 5.2 for their clients or their purchasers.
“Let’s hope that, should (or ‘when’) a banking system fails our conveyancing transaction next, we once again all pull together, use our legal heads, and provide immediate, practical short-term remedies for our clients – Clause 5.2! Well done everybody and thank you for your wonderful support on such a difficult conveyancing day.”
Read the orginal article: https://propertyindustryeye.com/barclays-it-chaos-and-service-outage-left-a-family-homeless/
