Am I liable for the debts of a previous occupant of my flat?

Icey77

CPM Management were the management company on the flat I owned previously and were absolutely dreadful - they would take up to 3 weeks to replace lightbulbs in public areas and were even slower for bigger problems.

I eventually got around this by asking if they had public liability insurance as my mother had tripped over in the dark, unlit hallway and had hurt herself. Purely made up on the spot but it did work - the bulb was replaced that afternoon and the hallway was lit again :rolleyes:

Eventually all the leaseholders got so fed up with the truly crap service for the extortionate management fees that CPM were sacked and a new management company employed.

wwarby

I gave up and paid it. I phoned my solicitor but the file was in archives and was going to take a few days to retrieve - I spoke to CPM again and they were unhelpful as ever, just giving me vague assertions that my solicitor should have held a retention fund for such things. I made the point that whatever my solicitor should or should not have done, what's done is done and for them to now come after me for the money, there must be either a law that says I am liable, or a legally binding contract that I have signed which says that I am liable. They just repeated the mantra about what my solicitor should have done.

In the end, I decided that the risk to my credit rating didn't justify me sticking to a principal I wasn't even sure I was right about, so I caved.

CPM are an attrocious management agent - it took me nearly a year of asking to get a communial front door that didn't shut properly fixed, and I have a leak in my roof that has had a bucket under it for two years that they haven't fixed. Two years ago they rendered all our visitor parking bays unusable by installing posts with combination locks and sending out a combination number that doesn't work. The bays have never been used since, despite my complaining at least half a dozen times. It pains me to hand over money to such an appalling company but I was stressing over this so much that I resolved the fight just wasn't worth it.

Thanks to all who responded

-William

oldone_2

A couple of points. Your credit rating was not at risk unless CPM took you to court,AND they won, AND you failed to pay the judgement within 28 days.

Secondly can you not get a majority of the other occupiers to agree to sacking the management company and appointing another. The next time something is not done, you could threaten CPM with this.

wwarby

@oldone: I thought (wrongly it seems) that the first call to the debt recovery agent would savage my credit rating for ever. It's disappointing to think that that is not the case.

On your second point, it's something I will definitely consider in the future, but with something like 120 flats on the estate, many of which are rented, a majority coalition is not going to be an easy thing to achieve. I know there is some dissatisfaction amongst other residents but when other residents have tried to start an uprising before I myself and said "meh... too much effort". It's only when you get a slap in the face from the company yourself that you feel motivated enough to do something about it, and everyone else seems apathetic towards the problem. I suppose that's how they get away with being so unashamedly bad at providing a service.