Your problems: no flight, no answers and no full BA payout

British Airways is refusing to cover our out-of-pocket costs after it cancelled our flight. On the morning of Saturday 7 September last year we woke to an email saying our flight that night had been cancelled because of crew sickness and we had been booked on to the “next available flight” on the following Monday evening.

BA was cancelling a lot of flights because of poor weather conditions in the UK. Even so, this was clearly not the first available flight, but one that suited BA. This was hopeless – I am a publicly funded lawyer and had to start a trial on the Monday. We tried to contact BA but no one answered the phone or emails.

We looked online – we were in Porto and, though we had been due to fly back from Lisbon, realised there was a BA flight from Porto that day with seats available. We rushed to Porto airport to find there was no one who could speak for BA on site. BA continued to fail to answer the phone or emails, so we bought two seats and flew home that afternoon. The problem was that by then the only seats on the plane were business class.

Had we accepted BA’s offer of flights on Monday, we could have billed the airline for three days’ food and lodging for two nights. But BA will not cover the cost of the flight we booked to get home. It is ignoring the fact we could not speak to anyone in its team.

BA had already paid £700 in statutory compensation because your flight was delayed by more than three hours, and refunded you the £422 cost of your cancelled flights, but you paid €1,794 for your new flight from Porto.

BA told me poor weather conditions at Heathrow caused severe disruption “but our customers were rebooked on the next available flight. Although our call centres were extremely busy due to the severe weather conditions at London Heathrow, our teams were still able to serve our customers”. It says passengers in this situation should speak to BA staff who will rearrange their flights, rather than booking a new flight themselves. But you clearly tried and failed to do this, so it has paid you an additional £1,082 to cover the difference in cost between the cancelled flight and the one you took.

We are raising money to restore a beautiful early medieval church in north Norfolk. The church has recently been added to Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register, with the last major work carried out in 1911. I am mystified by HMRC rules concerning recovery of VAT paid on invoices for work carried out on this Grade I listed church.

The limit now is £25,000 a year, but what does this cover? If we break the restoration down into three parts, the external, internal and graveyard restoration, with each section carried out in separate tax years, could we reclaim up to £25,000 in each of the three years?

The Listed Places of Worship (LPW) Grant Scheme, run by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, gives grants to cover the cost of VAT incurred on repairs costing more than £1,000.

Debbie Jennings, VAT director with accountant Moore Kingston Smith, says: “An application may comprise a number of smaller invoices, but each claim must apply to works that are eligible under the scheme and together be a value over £1,000 excluding VAT,” she said. “You can also submit just one claim in any 12-month period that is less than £1,000, but more than a value excluding VAT of £500.”

Invoices must be under 12 months old from the date of issue to the date when the grant claim is received by DCMS, and need to have been paid. The total of claims should not exceed £25,000 VAT in a year. If VAT costs exceed this cap, the church will still be able to claim up to £25,000, but the balance of the VAT will not be refunded.

Jennings says: “Claims for VAT over this limit can be made in subsequent years, provided the dates on the purchase invoices meet the time-limit condition.”

Claims are made online and cover VAT incurred on works to the building fabric, associated professional fees, and repairs to the turret clocks, pews, bells and pipe organs. Regular maintenance work and fees, and repairs to ancillary structures including graves, are not included. See listed-places-of-worship-grant.dcms.gov.uk/repair-work covered-full-list.

Email your problems to Jill Insley at your.problems@observer.co.uk