Can I withhold payment to Mgmt company?

richdeniro

Hi There,

Just to cut a long story short, am I within my rights to withhold payment to the management company on my leasehold property for a £500 invoice for some work that needs doing in the communal hallway?

I have requested supporting documents for the service charge invoices for the gas, electricity, gardening, maintenance and management/legal fees going back to June 2016 but they are refusing to send them onto me.

I only moved into the property in December 2016 but received the yearly statement through from management company a couple of weeks ago. I am suspicious that they are ripping me off as the electricity bill for the period (which covers 2 hallway lights that are on a timer) is higher than the entire electricity bill for my entire flat for a year.

Thanks in advance.

IAmWales

Management companies tend to be aggressive with debt collection, and they'll charge you for costs incurred. It's not an option I would recommend.

Why are they refusing you the documents? If it is because they are before you were liable, have you asked for the documents from Dec 16 onwards?

richdeniro

IAmWales wrote: »

Management companies tend to be aggressive with debt collection, and they'll charge you for costs incurred. It's not an option I would recommend.

Why are they refusing you the documents? If it is because they are before you were liable, have you asked for the documents from Dec 16 onwards?

I've asked for both as the service charge is based on advanced payments and so carried over to the next year.

They haven't specifically refused to send me them, just not replying to me every time I ask for them.

Myself and the other leaseholders in the property are trying to take over the management of the property but the current management company are doing everything in their power to slow the process down.

eddddy

richdeniro wrote: »

Hi There,

Just to cut a long story short, am I within my rights to withhold payment to the management company on my leasehold property for a £500 invoice for some work that needs doing in the communal hallway?

Haven't you asked this question before?

richdeniro wrote: »

Today I received a invoice for just over £500 today from the management company of the top floor flat of a Victorian conversion (three floors) that I own for my portion of 'Installation of a Interlinked Automatic Fire Detection and Warning System in the Non Domestic Parts of the Premises'.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/73308755#Comment_73308755

If it's the same question, refer to the previous answers about a section 20 consultation.

G_M

eddddy wrote: »

Haven't you asked this question before?



If it's the same question, refer to the previous answers about a section 20 consultation.

Come on edddy - be fair. That was (nearly) a month ago. The law might have changed since then!

yllop1101

I had similar in my leasehold flat- communal electricity charges were 150% above what was quoted.

I sent the following email, maybe it's worth sending and see if you have any joy? I haven't paid yet and still awaiting outcome, but they are investigating.

RE: Invoice number XXX, property address XXXX
Dear XX,
We have received the above invoice and would like to raise a query into the communal electricity charges on the account.

The electricity amount comes to more than 155% of the prediction, totalling an extortionate cost of £2,873.08 for the year. I myself may not have picked this up, however XXX is an electrical engineer, and upon seeing it was curious as to how such a bill has been accrued, finding it hard to believe that communal lights and a lift would generate such a bill.

Would you please answer the following:

A- What are your initial predictions based upon, e.g. previous years usage.
B- How you account for such an increase- why do you think it is so much more?
C- What, if any, investigations have you carried out within the block to ensure there isn’t some sort of fault or tampering which would explain such an increase in usage over what was expected.

Hopefully you will appreciate this is a huge increase in cost, and one that we would like to know more about before paying this years invoice.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.