Leasehold extension - solicitors mistakes

Supernova

Served notice via my solicitor over two months ago and the notice period expired so my offer should have been accepted as uncontested.

Now the other side's solicitors are saying that the original notice was invalid because they were not instructed by the landlord to acccept it and we need to re-serve. However their name and address was given to me directly by the landlord when I told him that I was seeking an extension.

My solicitor apparently sent a second letter which asked for confirmation that the other side had authority to accept the claim and they are saying that proves we didn't serve it properly.

Now my solicitor is also saying we should re-serve the notice because litigation to enforce the first one would be too expensive.

!!!!!!?

At first glance it seems these two expensive solicitors that I am paying for are just covering each other's *rses. What can I do? Why would I need to litigate about the first notice when it's the other side's incompetence that they ignored it?

Supernova

So it looks like my solicitor should have served the notice on the landlord not his solicitor. So we have to start over again.

Any thoughts?

Ta

Thrugelmir

What your landlord said and did seems to be the issue.

they were not instructed by the landlord to acccept it

Supernova

Thrugelmir wrote: »

What your landlord said and did seems to be the issue.

I wrote to the landlord forewarning that I wanted a Lease Extension and asking whether he wanted to negotiate informally. He said it should be negotiated through his solicitors and gave their address.

My solicitor served notice on the above solicitor and not the Landlord. They either ignored it despite a follow up letter, OR they passed it to the landlord and he ignored it.

LEASE.org say that the notice should always be served on the Landlord at his
registered address.


Anything I can do to get them to stick to the original Notice?

Fire_Fox

What does your solicitor mean by litigation - court action? This is a leasehold dispute and should be heard at a Leasehold Valuation Tribunal, at which you can represent yourself and will get support from the LVT in doing so. Is your solicitor a specialist in leasehold extensions/ disputes or is he a specialist conveyancer? IME these often do not go together. Have you read the LEASE website thoroughly?

Supernova

I spoke to LEASE and they said as above that the Notice was not correctly served, so I have no option but to re-serve and claim compensation from my solicitor if necessary.

It doesn't seem to be a tribunal matter and if I wanted to try to argue that the notice was served correctly it would have to go to a higher authority (I'm not going to go that far).

My solicitor says that they get served with notices and serve them on solicitors all the time and haven't come across this situation before.

For the moment we'll send a copy of the letter I received from the landlord telling me to negotiate through the solicitor.