Landlord Moving Gas Meter and Charging Me!!

GTG

Happy new year to all and I hope those that over indulged last night are now beginning to feel alive again :-)

I have a one bedroom purpose built leasehold flat on the second/top floor of a block of fifteen. Before the holidays I received a letter from my landlord stating that following a fire risk assessment and a safety inspection some important safety work is required. The work involves moving the gas meters from the cupboard under the stairs on the ground floor to external meter boxes. It goes on to state that the majority of work will be carried out by Northern Gas Networks but one of their contractors will be used to make the connection from the meter back into my flat. The estimated cost of which will be £1250 +VAT per flat. The landlord has not given me any details as to why the work is required. I am not aware of any requirement to have gas meters moved to external boxes and before asking the landlord I was wondering if anyone could offer a possible reason why this work would be required?

The landlord is a housing association and there is no mention about the work going through the competative tending process for the majority of the work. In the interest of price discovery I think I should have the right to insist on this process?

Anyone........ ?

kkpolobear

if its a housing association then it should be free but i could be wrong there

rogerblack

They can't go through competitive tendering, the majority of the cost is possibly due to the fixed fee that the landlord is paying.
Only one company per area can do these works - and their subcontractors, as I understand it, and it's ridiculously expensive.

It's quite possible that the landlord is not putting a great deal on top.

GTG

kkpolobear wrote: »

if its a housing association then it should be free but i could be wrong there

They are correct in that they can charge me but I'm just surprised at why they consider them to be a fire risk when they have been in the same cupboard since the building was built about 40 years ago! Sorry, perhaps my title was a bit misleading.

GTG

rogerblack wrote: »

They can't go through competitive tendering, the majority of the cost is possibly due to the fixed fee that the landlord is paying.
Only one company per area can do these works - and their subcontractors, as I understand it, and it's ridiculously expensive.

Yeah ridiculously expensive, Northern Gas Networks as the name implies own the gas pipe infrastructure but if they and their subcontractors are the only people that can do the work then surely there is law against this sort of monopolistic or restrictive practice?

Richie-from-the-Boro

GTG wrote: »

They are correct in that they can charge me but I'm just surprised at why they consider them to be a fire risk when they have been in the same cupboard since the building was built about 40 years ago! Sorry, perhaps my title was a bit misleading.

You are a leaseholder so the responsibility is yours and they can charge you, however all HA's have provision for what often amounts to interest free loans for such works spread over a maximum of 4 years.

This applies to Leaseholder & Shared Ownership but not Buy to Let social ownership.

rogerblack

GTG wrote: »

Yeah ridiculously expensive, Northern Gas Networks as the name implies own the gas pipe infrastructure but if they and their subcontractors are the only people that can do the work then surely there is law against this sort of monopolistic or restrictive practice?

Your option to challenge this would be via Judicial Review.
This will make the quote above seem startlingly reasonable.

GTG

Richie-from-the-Boro wrote: »

You are a leaseholder so the responsibility is yours and they can charge you, however all HA's have provision for what often amounts to interest free loans for such works spread over a maximum of 4 years.

This applies to Leaseholder & Shared Ownership but not Buy to Let social ownership.

Thanks for your input Richie, yes I'm responsible for the cost. The landlord included a copy of the relevant part of my lease in their letter.

Interesting point about the interest free loan. I knew the council (who were the previous landlords) offered interest fee loans but was not aware that the HA's were required to offer the same, especially up to four years. What with the government printing money and creating inflation and hence destroying the purchasing power of fiat money I'll definately have to take advantage of that up to the maximum term.

GTG

rogerblack wrote: »

Your option to challenge this would be via Judicial Review.
This will make the quote above seem startlingly reasonable.

As a long standing member of Which and the Consumers Association I'm going to see what they have to say. Maybe see what my MP has to say also.

ollski

why can't you get your own quote?, any gas safe registered engineer can run the supply from the new meter to your flat.

GTG

ollski wrote: »

why can't you get your own quote?, any gas safe registered engineer can run the supply from the new meter to your flat.

The block is not a simple box shape with say 5 flats on each floor over 3 floors. Even if it were the flat owners on the second/top floor would need longer pipe runs than those on the first and ground floor and similarly the first floor would need longer pipe runs than the ground floor. The shape of the block if you can call it a block is more like a "U" shape if you were looking down from above. Imagine the curved bit being flat and there being 3 flats high on that side. Then on each side of the "U" is two flats adjacent to each other 3 flats high giving a total of fifteen flats. Now if you look down at the right side of the "U" the gas meter cupboard is positioned on the ground floor approximately half way a long it's length.

As far as I'm aware the existing gas supply pipes come up from the meter cupboard on the ground floor through the structure of the building some of which are in a service shafts. I'm presuming the idea of moving the meters outside is so that the main service pipe supplying the block will then not need to enter the building at all and the pipes supplying the flats will be run up and/or around the outside walls to a single entry point for each flat. So it does not matter where the new meters are located some flats are going to have longer pipe runs than others, they are probably thinking the fairest way of charging for this is too split the cost equally between the fifteen flats. Much easier to do if they get one contractor to do the job.