lease extension problems - advice please

slatepipe

hi there

we have spent the best part of four years trying to get a lease extension completed from our housing association
briefly:
- after about a year of asking them for advice and trying to get them to respond to emails they admitted liability that they had given us misleading information about the process and agreed to waive their fees
- i then went through the process of getting a valuation done and after comparing our valuation with theirs we finally agreed a price for the lease extension - £6500
- i then found a solicitor to act for us to do all the legal work. i asked them how long this process should take, and they told me 'there is no time limit'. then the person who was looking after our case left the company and another person took over. then i didn't hear from them for a few months and eventually i rang up and i found out that the second person had left the company too. the person that i spoke to on the phone said that he was looking through the documentation of our case and would get back to me in a few weeks. he didn't get back to me. i then tried contacting them through their online form and received no reply. i eventually went in to their offices to see them to find out what was going on. this was approximately an 8-10 month period.
- they apologised and someone else then took over our case. then about april 2016 they emailed me and said they had liaised with our housing association's solicitors and were ready to complete. i was very relieved. they sent me an invoice including their fee and i spent about 6-8 weeks procuring the money and transferred it to them, almost £8k
- i then waited another month or so (remembering they told me there was no time limit and i was unaware how long these processes take) but eventually i sent another email asking for a progress update. our solicitor replied that they had contacted the housing association's solicitors to ask them to complete but had got no response so would ask again. this continued on nearly a weekly basis up until the end of last year.
- then i got an email from our solicitors saying the housing assoc had asked for another £250 as the cost of another valuation. I got pretty upset by this as we had been trying to complete for about 8 months and the price had been agreed. i complained to the housing association and they admitted that this time taken was their fault so agreed to waive the £250. I thought this £250 was extra money they were asking for on top of the £6500 for the original valuation
- once they agreed to waive this money i thought then that the process could be completed. i then received notice from our solicitors last week that the housing association were now asking for an extra £2300. I pretty much lost the plot when i read this
- i complained to the housing assoc again, i provided them with the documentation detailing the previously agreed price and the email from our solicitors which said that the housing assoc solicitors had agreed the price and that they were ready to complete. they didnt respond for 3 days but yesterday they said "The terms by which these proceedings were entered into were informal and as such they do not have to honour any previous agreements made." they told me that the best way forward is to pay up the extra £2300

can anyone offer any advice on this?

i feel like i have been banging my head against a wall of incompetence for four years now and i am having to foot the bill. nearly £8k of my money has been sitting in our solicitors account for coming up to a year and now i have been asked for £2300 more due to the time all this has taken. i have a litany of emails detailing all of this farce.

i especially feel like i have been given false information regarding the time this should take by my solicitors - they told me that there was no time limit. when i raised this with them when it became obvious there was a time limit (due to the extra costs asked for) they told me that the housing assoc solicitors did not make them aware of any time limit. which makes me wonder what i am paying them for

i am now wondering whether to take this further again:
- to complain to the solicitors about the 8-10 months it took for me to find out what was going on when they didnt respond to my emails when people had left
- to complain to the housing association ombudsman about the housing assoc saying they were ready to complete and then not doing so
- or just trying to pay the extra money because another fear i have is that if complaining again takes more time then i may end up getting asked for more money again
- or asking for my money back and giving up

thanks for any help, i know i said it would be brief but this is as brief as i could make it