Apartment, lift issues expected payment - Guidance Needed

boxrick

I live in an apartment, is is a large 18 floor building and also has shared usage with an "Apart Hotel"

http://www.thelight.co.uk/ is the Apart Hotel

Anyway, over the weekend a letter arrived through my letterbox and I assume also for many of the other residents with a demand asking for £200 for doing some lift repairs. Bare in mind I pay over £220 per month service charge which is really expensive to start with!

Simply put is there any way I can fight this, I am thinking of asking the service company for the other quotes ( which they almost certainly didn't get! ) and the other side of this is that actually the lifts are absolutely fine and nothing needs doing to them.

13k seems a crazy figure for what doesn't need doing.

See pictures below for more info

princeofpounds

That's not expensive for lifts!


Who owns the freehold (and presumably they employ blueproperty as their managing agent)?

ChumpusRex

Your only possible way of fighting this is to demonstrate that the work is not needed, or that other contractors could have done the job cheaper and that the manager failed to get quotes. You will also need to show that the lift warranty / service contract would not be affected by having a 3rd party in to do the repairs.

From experience, a service contract will need to be on place, and most service contracts do not allow 3rd party repairs while the contract is running.

If the works need doing then you need to pay - end of story. If the issue is the quote, then you may be able to reduce the amount to pay. But, lift maintenance is very expensive so I wouldn't expect anyone to do the job for significantly less.

eddddy

Assuming you have a 'normal' residential long lease (like a typical leasehold flat)...

Firstly, read the lease and see what it says about this.

And take a look at this link http://www.lease-advice.org/publications/documents/document.asp?item=22#14

Here's a few extracts from it:

Rights to challenge the service charge

The legislation provides protection to leaseholders in that demands for service charges must be reasonable...
...

It is most important that any application be supported by evidence and not just opinion that the charge is not reasonable. This can be on the basis that the works or services charged for are unnecessary, overpriced, of poor quality, insufficiently supervised, or any other reason
...

Although the procedure can be complex and subject to fees, the ability to challenge the service charges is a considerable power for the leaseholder.

Had they been requesting over £250 from you, a section 20 consultation for major works would be needed - which would have been more transparent. (Maybe they are purposely keeping the project small to avoid this.)

ReadingTim

You might also want to challenge how the £200 figure was calculated and in particular the amount being charged to Apart Hotel - it seems to me that the work required is to rectify cosmetic wear and tear caused by heavy usage, and Apart Hotel and their guests are likely to have been the cause of far more of this than the normal residents.

As they're likely to have caused most of the work, I don't see why they shouldn't pay for most of its cost!

davidmcn

ReadingTim wrote: »

You might also want to challenge how the £200 figure was calculated and in particular the amount being charged to Apart Hotel - it seems to me that the work required is to rectify cosmetic wear and tear caused by heavy usage, and Apart Hotel and their guests are likely to have been the cause of far more of this than the normal residents.

As they're likely to have caused most of the work, I don't see why they shouldn't pay for most of its cost!

While that may be the case, I doubt there's any chance of the OP or any of the other tenants being able to quibble about the apportionment now - it will be something stated in their lease.

laidbackgjr

You are paying approx 1/70th of the total cost, is your flat approx 1/70th of the no of flats / bedrooms / area or whatever other mechanism is likely to be used for apportioning the spend?

boxrick

There are around 110 apartments in total. Many won't be occupied but they are obviously all owned by someone.