Universal credit want to see the last 6 months worth of statements for my savings account but...

[BoobsOnTheMoon]

There are no statements 😬

I've been on live chat with the building society who say that because there was no account activity in any of the last 6 months, statements cannot be produced. There was no account activity because it's my emergency car repair fund that I do not touch unless the car breaks or needs replacing!

How do I explain this in a way UC will understand? There is just nothing I can print out to send them. I can't even screenshot because of the website security settings!

(Before anyone comes at me for claiming benefits whilst having savings, it's £2k as an emergency car repairs/replacement fund. I've got a disabled child, I work, and we live rurally, so having no car is Not An Option. Us having no car would cost the taxpayer more than £2k in a matter of months because I'd lose my job and have to claim more benefits!)

Then you need to show UC your current account...not your savings account no?

Pay a pound in , then ask for a statement.

Which building society is this? Whys it in an account that accrues no interest if it’s a savings account?

Printing a 12 month statement would help too

I had an issue as on my statement it shows both my accounts (current and savings). I always transfer my money to my savings and keep there and just transfer over for bills or shopping etc. so there’s a lot of back and forth between the two.

it said on the top of each one for each month - money in and money out and it was about £16000??!!! I have nowhere near that amount going in but it was recounting it each time any amount went back and forth and I had such a job explaining that !

There should be a way of printing a statement online. Usually a pdf.
or take a photo?! What about interest - doesn’t it show that?

There are no 12 month statements to print out. They just don't do them.

Sorry, there is indeed one statement from January when I got about £3.50 interest. But it only covers January. UC want a statement for each month from October to now.

Just print the statement from the last time there was movement and a take a photo of your account balance which ties back to that amount maybe?

What a useless building society. How ridiculous.

No, they can and do ask for evidence of all accounts you hold. My everyday current account is no problem, I've got all the statements and uploaded them already. But I can't work out how to explain to them that there are no statements for my other account. I call it a savings account because that's how I treat it but it's just a current account with a building society really, not an ISA or anything like that.

It sounds quite unlikely you’d only get interest once in 6 months, and that you’ve managed to pick a mystery building society that doesn’t pay interested regularly or produce bank statements or anything that can be screen shotted. So I think this will be hard to explain! Go into the branch and speak to them

I've actually been on chat with an adviser who has said this: "I'm sorry BoobsOnTheMoon but where there has been no account activity then it is not possible for our system to produce a statement"

Take a photo if you can't screenshot? Need a laptop and a phone or 2 phones or similar?

I only get interest once a year, isn't that normal? I assure you I am not making this up. The only statements that exist are for the months of January 2023 and January 2024, both times because a small amount of interest being paid caused a statement for that month to be generated.

It's also quite normal for banks to prevent screenshots on their app/website. PayPal does the same thing. Though as someone pointed out I could take a photo of the computer screen with my phone and send that. I was so perplexed that I didn't think of that!

And it's Nationwide, if you seem so determined to claim I'm making it up.

Very defensive! I’m not determined to claim you are making it up, I’m saying it sounds odd because it does! I have a current account and a savings account with nationwide and they’ve both always provided monthly statements and interest is monthly. As I said, go into the branch and see if they can provide anything to help.

Can you provide Jan 23 and Jan 24 - that will show no change bar the interest. Then pay in or take out a tiny amount to get another statement. Obviously it won't be what they ask for, but it will cover the time period.

Yes, but I imagine you use them often enough that there's always a statement generated? Until today I didn't know they couldn't generate a blank statement if there had been no transactions but that's what they've told me in writing.

Maybe proper savings accounts do pay monthly interest, I wouldn't know because I don't have a proper savings account, I've never really had enough money to bother! It's just a current account that I cut up the card for so I can't access it easily, so maybe that's why the interest is annual not monthly.

And you were basically accusing me of making it up, with your "how odd" and "mystery building society" comments. You know you were.

im saying it sounds odd because it does… being defensive and accusing me repeatedly of calling you a liar doesn’t change that. You are ignoring my advice to be defensive and have a pop. What’s the point?

I didn't know you could get interest on a current account, only on savings accounts, but maybe building societies are different to banks.

There will be a function to input a 12 month transaction search and download as a PDF. You may have to go on a desktop version. I send this to the accountant every year. This will have to do.

To get around the no screenshots issue, just get a friend to take a photo of your phone at the appropriate points. Then send you the photos so you can send them to universal credit.

I would go into the building society and ask for 12 month statement of account. My friend works at Nationwide and said that's all you need to do. Online chat are useless but go into your branch and speak to a human face to face is always the best option.

I tried this and got some sort of unwieldy poorly formatted spreadsheet that made no sense to me. I could send that though, I guess reading it is their problem not mine.

I have a savings account with Nationwide that I don't use. It let's me select activity going back up to 15 months in the app. Just select 'Activity from Past 6 months', it'll show 'No Transactions to Display' if you don't have any and take a photo of this. Easy.

You need to format it. There will be a function on a pc to do this. The app versions are not always able to do it but the desktop login version is easier to format.