Natwest threatening to close account

[NatwestHell]

Hi.
My DH had a letter today from Natwest. I have my own account but the main bulk of money including our sons DLA is paid into his account.
He has banked with them for at least 13 years. He has (at his request) no overdraft facility on this account and we are very careful with our money.
Today he's received a letter stating they will be closing this account down on the 13th May and any monies paid in or out of it will not be processed. It states this is due to "unsatisfactory operation of your account". It also gives the wrong name of the account as being a Select Account with overdraft control.
The account is not in arrears. It's used to pay for shopping, car tax and insurance, rent and the odd school cost.
The last time he received an unarranged overdraft fee was 2 years ago.
It also has a means form attached which makes no sense.
The only thing either of us can think of is, just before the end of November last year he tried to use a cash point and it said insufficient funds which he couldn't understand. On checking online, he had been scammed out of close to £600 over a period of three months by an online site. He thought he was using the national lottery site but it turned out to be a mirror site which helped itself to tiny amounts then bigger and bigger at 2am. He felt very silly not noticing (and has been far more careful around checking in and outgoings). Natwest were very unhelpful, at first saying it was fraud and they would get it back and then, after going silent for two weeks and being chased, that actually they wouldn't do anything and tough luck.
After going to the Ombudsman, they agreed to attempt a chargeback but warned up until the end of January this left the amount open to being requested back again. However this never happened and Action Fraud are investigating the site itself.
The worry I have is everything is paid in and out from there. We do receive help with our rent and of course we get child benefit and tax credits too. We would be high and dry without this account and of course worry that changing bank accounts for these would mean universal credit due to a change which we're trying to avoid for as long as possible.
We have emailed a complaint but this takes up to 56 days so that's no help due to the cut off.
What can we do if anything? It's an utter nightmare!

I don't understand the chargeback.

From what I can make out there were fraudulent transactions of £600 taken from the account. You asked the bank to sort it out. They did. Where did the £400 interest come from?

The chargeback occurred due to my DH raising a complaint with the Ombudsman Service. Natwest said under their rules, due to the site being linked to Gambling, it wasn't covered by their fraud promise as I they refused to return the funds. In their view, despite proof to the contrary from us, the site had told my DH he was signing up to a rolling and increasing credit agreement.
We took the same evidence to the Ombudsman who told us the website involved didn't meet UK Gambling Rules and it didn't say anything regards on going money being taken. Once Natwest was told this, the money reappeared in the account with no word from Natwest until he called them. They then explained they'd ordered a chargeback.
The other company we have since learned have a vast amount of claims against them so much so action fraud is investigating. Hence why they've tried it on by adding, according to Natwest, interest on monies lost by them. Luckily they were a month too late.
By the way, my DH is far from "wet". He's of a generation who banked with the same bank throughout life and did not deviate. He has now said we will look into going elsewhere.

I still don't understand why they have charged you £400

Sounds like the £400 charge was from the fraudulent website rather than the bank?

Yes sorry it was from the website not Natwest

If they have taken £600 fraudulently what is the justification for the extra £409

The issue was Natwest.
In fact, Action Fraud were very unimpressed with how they dealt with what we felt was fraud and what they felt was customer error. We actually had to quote banking law to them which they had misquoted. It was lucky we had both Action Fraud and the Ombudsman on our side or we would have gotten nowhere and been out of pocket.
Due to this and the fact Natwest instigated a chargeback and repaid the money via this chargeback, whilst refusing to admit fault in any way, it left us open to a month where the company involved could claim the money back plus interest and charges.
The month lapsed and we breathed a sigh of relief as Action Fraud said they would almost certainly ask for the money back. We asked Natwest what would happen in that case and the most they would offer was for it to be paid back in instalments but that they couldnt forced them to accept it back that way and if they declined they would remove the requested amount. They said quite firmly that if the money was asked for, they would do nothing else and we would have to take it further via the Small claims court but they wouldn't protect us at all.
Hence why the company asked for the amount plus interest and charges they felt we owed and also levied extra for losses from this account on their site my DH knew nothing about. We've involved Action Fraud again and they've done this before. It was just lucky that they tried it on over a month after the original request period had lapsed.

Everyone needs two bank accounts these days. The banks can decide to derisk You at any moment and you basically have no comeback. It happened to us. HSBC and Barclays are big offenders here.

This was an error but take it as a warning and open that spare bank account anyway.

I actually still can't make sense of what happened or why.

Your further post is even more jumbled and contains less information than those previously!