Housing Meeting Regarding £93.50 Monthly Service Charge

mcchalk · 24 January 2010 at 1:04PM

Hi everyone

I was hoping you could help me with regards to my service charge. Currently I pay £93.50 a month for a 2 bedroom flat in a block with 16 flats in it. They are in Bingley West Yorkshire (BD161DL) and were built in 2005 and are owned by Yorkshire Housing Association who we pay the charge to. However the external management fee is then forwarded go Eddisons who look after the external areas. I have posted about something else on here before and was told that £93.50 a month is very high.

We now have a meeting setup with Yorkshire Housing Association tomorrow and I wanted to go in there asking the right questions to try and find if we are paying the correct amount.

Below is a breakdown of what the money is paid for:

Ground rent: £14.58
Cleaning: £4.29
Window Cleaning £5.14
Landlords energy: £2.62
Electrical Inspections £1.55
TV Aerial – Provision: £1.55
TV Aerial – Maintenance: £0.88
Controlled Entry - Provision: £2.17
Controlled Entry – Maintenance: £0.78
Floor Coverings: £2.32
Internal Painting: £2.71
Sinking Fund: £12.00
External Management Fee – Eddisons: £19.67
Management Fee: £8.33
Day to Day Repairs: £3.84
Buildings Insurance: £10.08
Equipment Insurance: £0.44
Administration: £1.89

Total: £93.50

Hope someone can help me and thanks in advance for peoples advice.

JasX · 24 January 2010 at 1:21PM

I live in a virtually identical building 16 x 2 bedroom flats, built 2005. My service charges (if you include ground rent) are pretty similar but does include maintaining a Lift. Here's mine for comparison

The building is in London:

Management Agents Fee £12.45
Accountants Fee £2.08
Electricity £3.31
Cleaning communal areas £3
Gardening £1.56
Fire Alarm System maintenance £1.26
Lift maintenance/service contract £13.33
BT Lift Emergency Phone charge £1.17
Automatic Vehicle Gate £1.32
Window Cleaning £5.99
Refuse collection charges £1.59
Insurance £15.77
Sinking Fund £10.42

Ground Rent is £200pa each so thats another £16.67 per month

Grand total £89.91 per month.

I find it odd you're charged separately for provision of things as well as maintenance, where does this money go? are they leased? has anyone insepcted the accounts and receipts?

mcchalk · 24 January 2010 at 1:26PM

I will ask where that money goes tomorrow.

In term of inspecting the accounts I don’t think this has been done by anyone. I think when we ask to see them last time they said there would be a fee to do this. Can they ask for a fee or do we have the right to see them at no cost?

Oh by the way there is no lift here as well so I guess it shouldn’t cost more than your place in London?

ankspon · 24 January 2010 at 1:27PM

i live in a 2 bed apartment in a block of 8,my monthly charge is £50 and ground rent is £100 per year

JasX · 24 January 2010 at 1:35PM

I think they are allowed to charge a 'reasonable fee' but not 100% certain, there are a few things they have to do such as send you a "summary of rights and obligations" with any service charges invoices. Also there is a set time in which they have to send you a certified (ie with accountants certificate) breakdown of accounts after each period (year) and if they don;t do either of these things you don;t have to pay and are 'protected from any terms of the lease relating to non-payment of service charges'.

Ours was misbehaving a bit and we started sending them copties of statutes/SIs/sections of acts of parliament and eventually they started behaving themselves

(the above and we got 8 slightly miffed leaseholders together and pointed out we had the minimum number of leaseholders that together could take control of the management of the block if we wanted to under RTM legislation and that seemed to bring them round

)

blckbrd · 24 January 2010 at 1:41PM

It's a very well itemised bill and the individual heads don't appear excessive to me - there are just a lot of them.

It seems things like internal painting and floor coverings have fallen below the £250 per leaseholder consultation threshhold but I wouldn't expect them to appear on the annual bill for more than a year.

You may wish to check the duration of the external management contract. If it's over 12 months then it would have required consultation as a long-term agreement. Were you consulted?

Fire_Fox · 24 January 2010 at 2:41PM

To be fair your £93 a month covers a lot more than many - your ground rent, insurance, sinking fund and maintenance that would usually be in the form of a levy (floor coverings, painting) are included. Not sure why there is a separate management and admin fee? Is all the work you are being charged for actually being carried out to spec?

It's peculiar that you have arranged a meeting before you have viewed all the service contracts and invoices. What exactly did you ask for and did you do so in writing by recorded delivery? IIRC the management company can't charge for access but they can charge for copying. Have you read the whole LEASE website?

"Rights to further information (inspecting accounts and receipts)

As well as receiving the summary, the leaseholder has the right under section 22 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 to inspect documents relating to his service charge as a follow-up to provide more detail on the summary. Within a period of six months from receipt of the summary, the service charge payer (or the secretary of a recognised tenants' association) may write to the landlord requiring him to allow access to and inspection of the accounts, receipts and any other documents relevant to the service charge information in the summary and to provide facilities for them to be copied.
Facilities for inspection must be provided within one month of the request, and must be available for a period of two months.

There are further rights of investigation of service charges and management provided by the right to a management audit under the Leasehold Reform Act 1993 and the right to appoint a surveyor under the Housing Act 1996. Full details of those rights are set out in our leaflet 'Appointment of a Surveyor, Management Audits'."

http://www.lease-advice.org/publications/documents/document.asp?item=14

If you are unhappy after the meeting, consider asking Benjamin Bentley to quote, my parents block not far from you partially self manages and use these guys - the place is virtually immaculate after twelve years.

Saffy255 · 24 January 2010 at 9:11PM

Housing Associations are only allowed to charge you what it actually costs for your maintenance / service charges. They will oftn send you a bill based on last years' spend, and then if it's not all spent that year, refund, or credit your leaseholder account accordingly.

HA's operate under very strict finanical controls, governed by the Tenant Services Authority. You're right to challenge, but challenge them..... you'll find they'll be only too happy to help.

I work in the sector (not for YHA!!!) so I know what I'm on about!

mcchalk · 25 January 2010 at 11:09AM

Thanks for everyone’s help with this. I will certainly take all this onboard before the meeting.

Just to clarify I didn’t arrange this meeting. It been setup by Yorkshire Housing because of a different matter but will be used to discus the service charge as well.

Tanks all again

Stesshead · 26 January 2010 at 11:33PM

Hi ya,

just reading your post. Would you mind sharing with us how the meeting with HA went? Did they resolve your queries about service charge?

tks

Housing Meeting Regarding £93.50 Monthly Service Charge

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