Leasehold flat: £1200 payment demand for exterior decoration.

tomstickland

This is very useful info.
http://www.lease-advice.org/scgrframe.htm

Consultation on major works

Where a landlord proposes to carry out works of repair, maintenance or improvement which would cost an individual service charge payer more than £250, he must, before proceeding, formally consult all those expected to contribute to the cost (under Section 20 of Landlord and Tenant Act 1985). This has the dual effect of giving notice of his intentions to the leaseholders and seeking their view on the proposed works.

The landlord must serve a notice of intention on each leaseholder (and on the secretary of the recognised tenants' association, if there is one), which:

describes in general terms the proposed works or specifies where a description of the proposed works can be inspected and the hours during which it can be inspected. The inspection facilities must be made available free of charge, at a specified time and place. If, at that time and place, there are no facilities for copying the proposals, then the landlord must, on request, provide a copy of the description;

explains why the landlord considers the works necessary;

identifies the persons the landlord has asked, or proposes to ask, for an estimate of the costs;

invites observations in writing and states where the observation should be sent;

invites the leaseholder (and the recognised tenants' association) to nominate a person from whom the landlord should try to obtain an estimate. (This invitation does not apply, however, in cases where a public notice of works is to be made in the Official Journal of the European Union (see EU implications for consultation above);

The leaseholder (and the Recognised Tenants' Association) has a period of 30 days in which to send views to the landlord.

If it is a case where the leaseholder or Recognised Tenants' Association is able to nominate a contractor and more than one nomination of an alternative contractor is made, then the landlord must try to obtain an estimate from:

the person who received the most nominations; or

if two or more people received the same number of nominations, then he can seek an estimate from any one or more of these nominees;

if neither (1) or (2) applies, then he must obtain an estimate from any nominee.
At least one of the estimates must be from a contractor wholly unconnected with the landlord, that is, not an associated or subsidiary company or one in the ownership of the landlord. Where the leaseholders or the association has nominated a contractor, the landlord must try to obtain an estimate from that contractor and must include this in the estimates submitted or made available to the leaseholders.

Next, in most cases the landlord must serve a second notice on the leaseholders, the Notice of Proposals. This sets out the details of the proposed works and the likely costs. The landlord must supply a statement setting out the estimated amounts of the proposed work specified in at least two of the estimates, and make available for inspection all of the estimates for the work, without charge.

Where a public notice is required for EU purposes, a contract statement should be provided setting out the name and address of the person with whom the landlord proposes to contract; particulars of any connection between them (apart from the proposed contract); and, where reasonably practicable, an estimated amount of the relevant contribution to be incurred by the leaseholder, or, if this is not possible, the total amount of expenditure for the building to which the contract relates, again where practicable. If neither is possible, reasons should be given as to why this is so.

The notice must include a summary of the leaseholders' observations received by the landlord in response to the first notice, and the landlord's response to them.

Again, he must invite observations and allow 30 days for them to be made.

The landlord must 'have regard to' the observations he has received. This does not mean he is obliged to follow or act on the comments, but, if challenged later at the LVT on the reasonableness of the costs, he will need to show that he paid due regard to observations or provide justification as to why he did not.

If any leaseholder, or the Recognised Tenants' Association, made any observations or nominated an alternative contractor where they were able to do so, then, within 21 days after entering into the contract, the landlord must serve a further notice on each leaseholder and any Recognised Tenants' Association stating his reasons for awarding the contract, and provide a summary of any observations received and his response to them; or, instead of serving notice, he can specify the place and hours at which a statement of those reasons may be inspected. However, this notice is not necessary where the person to whom the contract has been awarded was nominated by the leaseholders or Recognised Tenants' Association, or submitted the lowest estimate. Again, this notice can be referred to in any dispute before an LVT.

hazeyj

That sounds correct. Have you any idea how much you actually pay the managing agent per flat? It will be on your service charge reconcilliation sheet.

I would most certainly see what other manageing agents can offer you in terms of service. In our block we pay £200 per flat per year to the managing agent, they produce and manage our budget, manage our service charge account, produce and file accounts, collect service charge and chase people, pay bills, provide maintainence for payment amongst other things Our last agent were absolutely appalling and did none of these things and also sepmt money on things they shouldnt have amongst many otehr things. I didnt actually realise we could sack them until I realised that I actually had a share in the management company. I contacted everysingle lessee (many are overseas investors and so rent out) and I put it them (and the freeholder) that the building was not being looked after effectively and this would affect their investement in the future if they didnt take action there and then.

12 months on, I have the full trust of all leaseholders and have sucessfully sourced a new agent by word of mouth and they have been wonderful.

The building pretty much runs itself now but the last agent totally mucked up the accounts so much and didnt chase people for payment and I had to give the go ahead for service charge to be collected in advance to build the account up again. You do have to make hard decisions like this as not everyone liked the idea of paying up front, but at the end of the day, when you own a flat you also want the common parts and outside areas to look nice too and this does cost money.

I have weekly meetings with my agent and I always know whats going on, who is being evicted, what works being done and for how much. There are three directors along with me.

I think your agent should be advised that they can and will be replaced if they cannot provide all the information that you need above.

You need to find out who the directors are of the management company that you have a share in, but your agent should be able to tell you this if none of the other leaseholders know.

Also, have you spoken to the freeholder at all about your concerns? Might be an idea.

I have no idea of your small claims recourse..sorry.

Let me know how you get on. Its lots of stress initially but if you get the other leaseholder to do as much as you then you will be laffing.

hazeyj

http://www.ukdata.com/company-credit-reports/BOAKES-DRIVE-MANAGEMENT-COMPANY-LIMITED.html

Also by lookng at the above link your accounts are well overdue. I would check this with your agent.

tomstickland

clutton wrote:

are you willing to be the proactive member of the lessees ?

i would leave the small claims court reference until you get their first response

Yes I am prepared to get this thing going.
No reference to small claims in my first letter.

My printer is now chugging away printing a 6 page letter for each of the flats. I'm going to have check the leaseholder addresses for each flat. I've got the land registry records at work, I seem to remember those containing the leaseholder details.

Doozergirl

Thanks for the stuff on Section 20, that's really useful to me.

Can I suggest that you either knock on doors beforehand, or knock and deliver the letter? If you are going to sack your agent, then you're going to have to do a lot of talking.

Introducing yourself and getting their immediate opinions will help you by:
Getting you an immediate straw poll of other's opinions
Setting you up as the leader of the revolt(!) and making you approachable; giving you a face which doesn't look like that of a grumpy old man who likes to write letters. They'll be far more open to your suggestions.:)

It realy bolsters you up if you know you've got support when you speak to your managing agent. If they're anything like ours, you'll have to speak to them a lot as they have to be chased for a reply to every letter and phonecall.

tomstickland

I've spoken to most of my neighbours at various times in the last few weeks - I'm well aware of their feelings on the managing agent.
I think my "campaign" letter will appeal to most of the owner occupiers here. It's very chatty and lays out my thoughts and a number of options that might benefit all of us.
A payment demand for £1200 tends to focus the mind.

clutton_2

go for it tom !!!!!!

EdInvestor

Good luck, Tom. This approach needs to become a lot more common to stop the abuses. If managing agents and freeholders know that leaseholders are willing and able to put some effort into running their buildings properly, then they are likely to respond.At present they are taking advantage of leaseholders' apathy, disunity and communication problems.There is no reason why these problems can't be overcome with a bit of determination IMHO.

Where people really need help is in local authority blocks where councils often contract out massive repair programmes with no thought of the costs to the leaseholders and ride roughshod over their protests.

Has anyone ever tried to exercise the right to manage against a council, I wonder?

kjl26

Hi Tom,

We're having a similar problem with our managing agents at the moment - bought the flat last September and then received a letter in March saying they were about to begin consultation for the 'planned major works' costing in the region of 10K per flat (!) - there are three flats.

I could go on and on about the detail of it, but suffice to say we have mobilised the other leaseholders and first and foremost filed a letter with the managing agents asking for clarification of various points (about 8 weeks ago and no reply as yet...) and exercised our right to nominate a contractor (although we were not invited to do so, in contravention of the guidelines - they have quite clearly tried to skirt the guidelines on a number of occasions and we're keeping an eye on that with a view to being able to use it later, perhaps).

Next, we set up a recognised tenants' association, which gives us more rights between us than we have individually, and allows us to nominate a second contractor (for the RTA - the agents have to follow up only one recommendation from a leaseholde, but if there is an RTA they must follow up their suggestion too), but, importantly, to appoint our own surveyor (this is documented somewhere on the lease advice site). I know your 'works' have already been done, but the surveyor is really useful in that they 'work' for the RTA for as long as you like on a consultative basis - e.g. you can get them to check out the works to see if they arose from previous neglect, etc., but also to monitor the work as it progresses to check it is being done to good standards and also reasonably time- and money-wise (might be useful for you if there is a discrepancy between the time period quoted for the job and that actually used). Also, they can check the managing agents' accounts, which is the bit we are really interested in, as they have been itemising around 1500 quid a year, between the flats, specifically for 'general repair' and we know they haven't been near the building in 9 years...so where has that money gone...hopefully the surveyor can help.

Finally, we are now starting the process of asserting RTM, starting with setting up a company at Companies House this week...if anyone has any experience of the process, it woudl be good to hear tips/warnings if you have them.

Sorry, I have rambled a bit here but if any of it might be of interest/help I would be happy to elaborate. Good luck with getting it sorted

Katie

tomstickland

Right, things are moving forwards here. I've spoken to my solicitor and lease-advice.org and they've all been very helpful.

The advice was to go to a LVT (Leasehold Valuation Tribunal) via thehttp://www.rpts.gov.uk website.

link removed, wrong link!

I'm writing to all of the leaseholders telling them that if they think that the agent failed to follow the proper consultation exercise then write to them and inform them that they will be instigating LVT proceedings.