Shared roof with housing association...repairs....Where do we stand?

Glitter_Girl

Hi all!

Please let me know if i should be posting this elsewhere!

Our house is a one bed 4-in-a-block/ground floor maisonette/ground floor villa (its been named so many different things over the years...not sure what its official name would be now!). The house above ours (which is "attached" to the roof) is a 3 bed 2 story house owned by a housing association. We've lived here nearly 10 years and never heard a peep from the housing association. Over the years they've built scaffolding up to the roof and done various work that we've never been involved in.

This all changed in the summer of 2014 when they wrote to us out of the blue and said they were in the process of upgrading all of their properties. As they own the property next door aswell as above us and would be re-roofing it completely, they offered us to have our roof redone at the same time as apparently upstairs had "suffered some leaks over the past year" - this is the first we heard of these leaks (which they had gone ahead and repaired without telling us). This complete re-roof was going to cost just shy of £16k and, upon re-reading our title deeds, we learned we'd be responsible for half of this! We were young when we bought this house and, call us nieve, we just didnt realise it was even our responsibility at all - we always viewed it as their roof, not ours. Anyway, lesson learned! We politely declined the complete re-roof as we had just had a baby and our house had just gone on the market....costly enough!

Roll on to the friday before Christmas where we get a knock on the door and advised the roof now had essential repairs that needed done urgently. All good, we knew this time would come (although their timing could've been better....5 days before our baby's 1st christmas in our tiny house we still haven't sold....you can imagine how stressed we were!). The housing association had already gone ahead and got a quote with their roofers, so we asked for a copy of their quote as we know we are entitled to get quotes aswell.

We heard nothing again until today, 30th January, when a letter drops in our door from the housing association. The quote is for a considerable amount of money and for various repairs and is dated 21st OCTOBER 2014!

We do not dispute that the roof needs repairs and we know we are responsible for 50%, which is fine. However, since we have no access to said roof and we do not really speak to our neighbours above, do the housing association not have a responsibility to tell us of any repairs within a timely manner?! They've done repairs in the past without telling us, they've also had leaks they've not notified us of. So we have had no chance to get any repairs done to protect the roof from future problems (as we didnt know there were any problems!) Our main concern now is from 21st October until now, we've had terrible weather including high winds and i can only assume it'll be in a worse state than the quote reflects!!

Where do we stand with this? Should we not have at least been notified earlier? Or can they just throw this at us nearly 4 months late and it's fine? We're in scotland so i know there is a tenements act which we have to adhere to, but does it offer any protection for things like this?

Thanks in advanced for any advice you guys can give me!

PlutoinCapricorn

This sounds complicated. Charges of this kind are often discussed in the House Buying, Renting and Selling section as they are not DIY.

Are you a freeholder or a leaseholder? Have you got a contract with the HA?

littlerock

Have a look at this:

http://scotland.shelter.org.uk/get_advice/advice_topics/repairs_and_bad_conditions/repairs_and_maintenance_in_common_areas/responsibility_for_repairs_and_maintenance_in_common_areas

Glitter_Girl

Thanks for getting back to me! Yes, it is very complicated, couple that with us trying to sell our house and it complicates things even more!

We're a freeholder - as far as i know, all properties bought in Scotland are, but i could be wrong. No contracts whatsoever with the HA - we own our property outright. Since all this began though we've realised we're the only "lucky" ones in our street to own our property...every other house is council owned or HA, so we're the only property left with an older roof/fence/front door etc now :-(

Thank you for the Shelter link - we already know we're liable for 50% as its in our title deeds, however nowhere mentions about timescales for reporting repairs etc. I might give Shelter a call though and see if they can give any further advice. We tried citizens advice but i felt like they just weren't listening to my question and just kept saying "you are liable" - yes, we know that already!!

Thanks again :-)