was then head of litigation at RWP Solicitors (Richard Wilson Pangbourne), based in Reading, Berkshire. Over 300 shared-appreciation mortgage customers paid £5,000 each, a total of £1.5m, towards legal fees for a class action. Hilary Messer said that recent changes to the Consumer Credit Act made it possible to sue the banks over the mortgages. Under the act, the changes to which were retrospective, if a court determined that the relationship between a creditor and a debtor was unfair to the debtor, it had wide powers to vary the terms of the loan agreement. A legal letter before action was sent to the banks in January 2009. A group litigation order (GLO) was sought at a hearing on 14 July 2009 and it was made in the High Court on 5 October 2009, enabling the shared-appreciation mortgage customers to take legal action as a group against the banks. The banks appealed against the decision that allowed the case to be heard and, with a different judge, won their appeal. The customers' solicitors needed more money, which the customers did not have, and so they had to withdraw their case. The customers then became liable for the banks' costs. The banks agreed to waive their costs if the customers made legal agreements ("gagging orders") not to make any further complaints about their shared appreciation mortgages. The Shared Appreciation Mortgage Action Group (SAMAG) was dissolved and became part of the wider Struggle Against Financial Exploitation (SAFE) action group. The solicitors Teacher Stern started claims in 2014 against Bank of Scotland and Barclays Bank for compensation relating to shared-appreciation mortgages that were sold between 1996 and 1998. In June 2021 the solicitors Teacher Stern announced that they had successfully negotiated a settlement with Barclays Bank on behalf of 37 clients who took out shared-appreciation mortgages in the late 1990s. The details of the settlement are confidential. Media coverage As well as many reports concerning shared appreciation mortgages in the national newspapers, there were reports in the August 2003 edition of Which?, the magazine of the Consumers' Association, and in the September 2006 and August 2007 editions of Saga Magazine. A BBC Inside Out South investigation into shared-appreciation mortgages, presented by Nick Wallis, was broadcast on BBC One on 8 September 2014. One of the people interviewed on the programme by Nick Wallis was Dr Julian Lewis, Member of Parliament for New Forest East