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Money Box: Problems with eco-homes and equity release

13/11/2021

Problems with eco-homes and equity release

BBC Radio 4 - Money Box, Problems with eco-homes and equity release

Borrowing against your eco-home, universal credit woes, crooks stealing one-time passcodes

Can you borrow money against your environmentally-friendly house, problems with universal credit, and how crooks are stealing the one-time passcodes that should be protecting you.

We're urged to be more environmentally friendly, but one listener has found he cannot release the equity he has tied up in his specially built, and officially signed off, eco-house. Is the equity release market out of step with efforts to counter climate change? We find out, with Money Box reporter Dan Whitworth and Amanda Moore, senior adviser at the UK’s largest equity release advice firm, Key. 

Money Box has fresh revelations about criminal websites on the open internet. Two weeks ago we told you about the websites on which crooks buy and sell your confidential financial information. This week, Money Box reporter Kaf Okpattah has found another website which sells a do-it-yourself tutorial explaining how to bypass banking security by intercepting one-time passcodes, in order to steal money from accounts. The government is proposing an Online Safety Bill - but will it stop criminals taking our cash? We hear from Damian Collins MP, Chairman of the parliamentary Select Committee looking into it.

Some people who claimed Universal Credit benefits during the Covid pandemic may have to pay it back because the Department for Work and Pensions is suspicious about some claims. That's according to the Child Poverty Action Group, which says the DWP may be acting unlawfully by assuming that anyone who has failed to verify their identity in time - by sending a selfie by their front door holding a local newspaper, for instance - has been wrongly claiming help. We hear from CPAG solicitor, Claire Hall.

And our Money Box Mini this week: Can I give my beach hut to somebody without anyone having to pay tax?
Listen in for the answer.

Presenter: Paul Lewis
Producer: Paul Waters
Reporters: Dan Whitworth & Kafui Okpattah

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