two years ago i opened an account in my grandsons name into which i pay roughly £15 a month. He is eleven and i plan on giving him his bank card on his seventeenth birthday. Hopefully this will enable him to tskr driving lessons and/or buy his first car. I am off work ill at the moment and its looking like they are going to pay me off on medical grounds. if i have to claim benefits in the future, am i safe in assuming this money does not have to be declared ? It is in my grandsons name, i hold the bank card only to put money in it over the counter at the branch.

around 2-3 years ago I had a Barclays student account with the usual £1000 overdraft limit etc. One day I withdrew some money I had been saving in paypal into my account and decided to go to the bank to withdraw some to pay some bills (it was £2000 that went in). I'd lost my pin a while ago, so I took along my passport and card, told the lady at the counter that I did not have my pin, and they said ID would be fine so i showed my passport, and she had the cheek to say it wasn't me in the picture (it was a few years old but still valid!). And then she said the DOB didnt match and neither did my mothers maiden name or address (and she checked the account number and sort code 3 times, it was my card with my name on it)! I was fuming and you can imagine when you have £2000 that you saved and then a bank that says the account doesnt belong to you. I actually started shouting at the lady and then the manager came, he said the same thing and that I had to leave or they would call the police, I said call the police, I am exactly who I say I am, please call them. Eventually I just walked out very annoyed, I went home and went through all my room to find my pin they had sent me, and luckily I found it, I withdrew every penny from the account and never bothered with it. 8 Months later I get a call from barclays saying my account has been closed because I have not used it, I explained what had happened but the person on the phone did not care, and this time mysteriously they had my correct DOB and address! they said I had to pay the overdraft back immediately or I would get a default, I was not working at the time so I told them I could not afford to pay, they said I would get a default and I had to pay a minimum of £150 a month! i managed to pay 2 months worth and after that I was broke, I got a default put on my credit file! Is there any way I could have this removed? I was almost clear from all defaults until this happened (I had ones from when I was 18, around 5-6 years ago which should be going soon). Anybody had any experience trying to get these sort of default's overturned? Any help would be greatly appreciated