£25m worth of premium bond prizes unclaimed

£25m worth of premium bond prizes unclaimed

The hunt is on to find the missing winners of more than £25m worth of unclaimed premium bond prizes.

They include a man who scooped the then-sizeable sum of £25 in one of the first draws in 1957, but has never come forward to collect his cash.

National Savings & Investments said yesterday the total amount of unclaimed cash had risen to its highest ever level. The biggest prize waiting to be united with its owner is £25,000.

In all there are 433,000 people who are unaware that they have been touched by Ernie, the machine that picks premium bond winners. Their cash is waiting for them, but they need to claim it.

The increase in unclaimed prize money is partly down to the fact that more people than ever are buying the bonds. There has been a sales surge in recent years, driven by people turning away from share-based investments, and £26bn of the public's cash is now invested in the bonds - up from £3.7bn just over a decade ago.

Little is known about the £25,000 winner other than that he is a man who holds £50 worth of bonds and was last known to be living in the EC2 postal area of London. The bond number is 001JK051177. There are also three £10,000 prizes waiting to be claimed plus hundreds of £5,000 and £1,000 prizes.

The man who won £25 in the sixth premium bond draw in November 1957 was last known to be living in south Yorkshire.

Sally Swait, premium.....continued below

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bond manager at National Savings, said: "It's remarkable that we need to remind customers to claim any prize, particularly those worth £25,000.

"We're standing by to give away as much as possible of the £25m in unclaimed prizes and urge customers to get in touch to check if they are a winner."

There are a number of reasons why the winners will have fallen off the radar, the most common being that they moved house but forgot to tell National Savings their new address. Some people may not even be aware that they have premium bonds.

They might not remember making their original investment many years ago, or perhaps were given bonds as a child and have forgotten about them. However, there is no time limit on claiming.

Premium bond holders can check whether they have won a prize at the National Savings website: www.nsandi.com

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005