Hi there.

I entered into a PTD in January 2013. It was to last 39 months @ £208 per month, repaying a total of £8112. (Total debt is around £18k)

In August 2013, my circumstances changed as I stopped receiving tax credits and my income fallped by £166 per month. I informed my trustee and they told me I could reduce my contribution from £208 to £108 per month.

In October 2015, my trustee told me that as there were arrears accruing, they were going to extend the TD for another 38 months, meaning my TD would now run for a total of 77 months. Therefore they expected another 45 payments @£108 per month. I never gave any explicit permission for this extension either verbally or in writing, but just continued to pay £108 after the 39 months had passed.

Now my trustee has just completed a financial review of my income and expenditure statement and made reductions in various individual lines of expenditure to 'find' an extra £215 of surplus cash and they want me to add this to the £108 and now start paying them £326 per month.

I have a couple of issues:

1. My trustee has accepted my previous four submissions of I and E without comment and are only now after 4 years, trying to reduce some of the individual budget lines to free up this surplus cash. How can they change the goalposts now, they accepted these statements since 2013 and are now moving the goalposts, surely they can't just make changes like this. I assume they've let me creditors know this in their annual reports for the last three years, so why make changes now? If it was acceptable for the last three years, what's made them change their mind?

2. As I am now in the extension period of my TD to clear the arrears that accrued, if I now increase my contributions (as they want me to do, but I'm currently disputing this) then will they now reduce the extension period significantly as they will have recovered the arrears faster? I don't want to be paying this high amount for the next three years, but would maybe clear it off over six months if it meant the TD would end earlier.

My trustee has been really poor at managing my case, they don't reply, acknowledge or process documentation I send to them, I've never dealt with the same person twice, I have no idea if I have a relationship manager. I have proof of their incompetence and lack of action and am seriously considering submitting a formal complaint, but would rather try and get the TD to end early and not cause any more ructions.

I am aware of the CFS and I think this is what they are trying to apply to my budget statement but this came into force in November 2013 and only applies to TDs that happened after that date. I signed mine on the 19th January 2013.

Any advice you could give me would be much appreciated.