Roof repairs organised by neighbour - who is liable?

rm_82

Just off the phone with CAB.

In short, they have confirmed that he's gone about it the wrong way - he should have got at least a majority of the residents in the stair to agree to the works before he went ahead, in order to be able to enforce payment - all info from the Statutory Tenant Management Scheme. (I can't post links on here yet, but copy and paste the following into your browser if you're interested!)

scotland.shelter.org.uk/get_advice/advice_topics/repairs_and_bad_conditions/repairs_and_maintenance_in_common_areas/making_decisions_using_the_tenement_management_scheme

What they have advised me to do is to write to him, and tell him that having received limited advice, he could be in breach by not having involved the rest of us in making a decision on the repairs without consultation, so until I have received more detailed legal advice, my decision to pay will be on hold.

Luckily, my local CAB office do a Legal Clinic once a week, so the next step is to try and get in there for a chat about the legalities of us all being responsible for the roof vs. him not involving the rest of us in the decision making process. Also need to find out the definition of 'emergency repair' as that appears to be the only way he could have acted on behalf of the entire block without consultation (though I suspect that if the Council wouldn't grant him a stat notice, it can't have been much of an emergency.)

Phew! Might be a while before I'm back with a definitive conclusion, but I will post with an update on how it all pans out.

Thank you all so much for your help on this one! :T

jennifernil

Good luck!!

Could be the repairs were needed, but he has done it all wrong. At least you will have some time to save up if you do have to pay!

Still bamboozled by stair lighting being part of CT! Wonder why other residents in Edinburgh should be picking up the collective tab for stair lighting in thousands of closes?

Our daughter, in Glasgow, has to pay for her own stair lighting, It's about £1200 pa divided between 14 flats. I wonder if her CT, some £1800 pa, is being used to pay for close lighting in thousands of older tenements? Hardly seems fair.

rm_82

jennifernil wrote: »

Still bamboozled by stair lighting being part of CT! Wonder why other residents in Edinburgh should be picking up the collective tab for stair lighting in thousands of closes?.

I am too now that I think about it. Our water rates are bundled in with our council tax here, so who knows what else is - I couldn't find anything definitive about it on the Ed Council website - just a page where you can report a problem with lighting in your Stair.

We maybe have one council-owned flat in the block that I'm not aware of, and that's enough! I might email them to ask (Hope I don't trigger a massive backdated bill!:eek:)

DVardysShadow

paddy's_mum wrote: »

I agree with a great deal of what has been said in this thread but I return to one point and it is this.

If the work that was done was, in fact, also to the benefit of the other owners - with or without their knowledge and/or consent, and assuming done to a competent standard - is there not a moral obligation to cough up a fair share of the costs?

I'm of the view that if this ever got to a court, the judge would be looking at not only the bare bones of law and rights but also at natural justice. Okay, the former owner made a mistake and went about it the wrong way but that doesn't erase the fact that an advantage has been bestowed upon all the other owners.

Just my thoughts.

Sorry, I don't buy that. By taking unilateral action, this leaseholder has deprived all the other leaseholders of their rightful opportunity to have oversight of the work.

This work might well not have been completed to an adequate standard and might increase the liabilities faced by the other leaseholders over the years to come.

In short, the work is far from an unqualified blessing, even if done correctly.

And a moral obligation is something that someone takes on for themselves - not something which someone else imposes. As a matter of public policy, this leaseholder should not get anything back, if only to encourage others not to put their fellow leaseholders into this situation.

jennifernil

As far as I know it's only water that is included up here, but it could be that the council did originally own the tenement. Possibly goes back to the days of feuholders. Even so, I would expect them to bill you extra for lighting.

Mind you, Edinburgh is quaint, so nothing would surprise me!

Jaynne

We looked at buying a flat on Dalkeith Road where because one of the flats was still council owned the shared garden at the back was still maintained by the council so I imagine that one of your flats is still council owned.