It depends, so for example, if you personally requested some domains from Fasthosts and made it clear they are not yours but would like to take ownership of them during their expiry/suspension, providing you don't then move them to your tag for change of registrant, technically a contract is between you and Fasthosts only (of which Fasthosts own terms, whilst contrary to Nominets, allow them right to do this), and Nominet have no part to play. Where Nominet do have a part is if complaints are made to them, they are compelled to investigate Fasthosts, not that of the individual.
Yep, what I mean is that the owner will be assigned, but I would guess that Fasthosts threw in a condition that the owner of the .co.uk had to request the .uk in order for it to appear in their control panel, else Fasthosts have custody in accordance with terms I think you quoted a few pages back. I speculate entirely that unless someone knows first hand and can confirm, that the .uk's never appeared in the registrants control panel, and they would have to tick a box to accept. I'm hoping this has only been possible on ROR domains and Fasthosts won't allow this on every suspended domain they manage.
Only if the domain had the registrants contact information; not just name. For all we know, Fasthosts had a term that meant they remained the contact until accepted by the registrant. Just guessing, but hope that makes sense?
That's a good point, email addresses were a validation method unless they had some shady agreement with Nominet! Still think Fasthosts would have added in some condition that the registrant didn't own the domain until accepted into their control panel for renewals, which gives them flexibility to move domains rather than expire, but again, unless we know someone that has an unclaimed .uk, which is unlikely, we don't know for sure.
