Shared ownership Fake / FRAUD charges

dead_ringer

Hi all, hope you can help.
I'm at my witts end. As some clever helpfull people will know I wrote on here a few months ago about the housing assc. I live under appointing a car park management firm to screw us.
However all the while its much worse than that and goes to the very top.


Background.
I wont name names just yet, but my housing assc. started off very small when in the 90's the Gov. forced local councils to give them their housing stock. From this spawned a small offshoot for the purposes of selling 'social housing' under shared ownership.
For reasons I wont go into here, although working in a good job I was desperate, homeless and skint. And VERY fortunate to be offered 1 of only 4 SO properties on a very nice new expensive estate. The price was scandalous but 50% share leashold. With all the fees, costs charges etc I just made it scraping by and knowing all about the mortgage, + rent (increased by 1% above inflation pa) + service charges. All well and good. This was 15 yrs ago. By now the HA has had more name changes than the royals, and probably more in their banks too. They promote being a 'Not for profit' company as if they are a saintly charitable cause, but far from it. And now one, if not the biggest HA in the south of england.



About 7yrs ago while Im going through hell with the illness and death of a very close relative, the housing assc. appoints an area manager (as well as having the management company we pay for) and made himself known by 'stealing' everybodys door mats from the communal stairway and then later on charging £10 for storage. (Safety reasons!!)

After a heated debate we were then charged £75 for signage which was 4 little stickers to put on riser cupboard doors saying keep closed. (10x £1.50 via ebay).
And so it went on. Myself and neighbors were all livid, all complained bitterly to the HA by letter / phone etc. But we all work, all busy and all at a loss what else to do.


After last year, lots of complaints to their accounts dept, snr managers, emails to the CEO I thought that was the end of it, but no. Given the charges have risen well into the thousands now, and cover such 'works' as treatment for japanese knotweed somewhere on the estate, to rubbish clearance from the gardens of their rented properties. Boundry fence repairs to neighboring property and so on.

Well about 8 months ago, just after Grenfell, My little block of 4 flats suddenly was blessed with a new fire alarm system. 1x box, 3 red call points, + linked to heat detector in doorway of each flat.
From the statement I just received this turned out well over £5000. Plus more fake charges that relate to their rental properties on the estate than mine or neighbors. So each of us is looking at finding an extra grand on top of all the other costs.

The thing is, they know we know, they're taking the P !!!!. They just quote the lease we have that we have to pay any additional costs and thats that. Two fingers FU basically.

In my mind its clearly fraud, but when we here they pay a hundred pound of our money to change a light bulb in parliament, what could we do about them paying well over the norm to their contractor mates. And even when some stuff is done by their own staff :(:(

HampshireH

Research section 20. Leaseholders need to be consulted on major works.

If your neighbours are reporting other minor things then yes the HA will respond and you will all split the bill.

The charge can only be fake/fraudulant if they dont exist and services were never paid for. Your posts suggest this isnt the case.

The doormat thing is often on advice from fire brigade. I've been the person having to remove dootmats for a HA on the direct advice from the fire brigade. & having to deal with people like yourself who don't understand why.

You will find advice is often mixed depending on which service you speak to but a HA will always air on the side of caution and you only lease from your front door not the communal area so have no right to put anything in it.

eddddy

The law (Landlord and Tenant Act 1985) states that service charges demanded from leaseholders must be 'reasonable'.

If you think the service charges your freeholder is demanding are not 'reasonable', you can pay them under protest, and challenge them at a Tribunal.

You have to pay a £100 fee for the Tribunal, but if the Tribunal agrees with you, they will probably tell the freeholder to pay you back the £100 - plus any of the fees which aren't 'reasonable'.

More info:
https://www.lease-advice.org/fact-sheet/service-charges/
https://www.lease-advice.org/advice-guide/service-charges-other-issues/

antrobus

dead_ringer wrote: »

...They promote being a 'Not for profit' company as if they are a saintly charitable cause, but far from it. And now one, if not the biggest HA in the south of england.,,,

All Housing Associations are 'not for profit' because that's one of the requirements of the Housing Associations Act 1985 in order to be a HA.

Of course, 'not for profit' generally means that there are no shareholders demanding a share of the action in the form of a dividend. A not for profit organisation can be just as eager to make a humongous profit, sorry surplus to spend on what it pleases. Which might be more houses. Or bigger salaries. Etc.

Not that relevant to the OPs problem I know.

00ec25

your OTT language "fraud" "fake" shows that you are unable to see the wood for the trees

a housing association does not commit "fraud" against its tenants. What is does is charge then the costs of the works it does on their homes.

you are perfectly entitled to question the size of the charges and to seek your own quotes for the work - but then as a social housing dweller you presumably already knew what your rights are?

It is not "fraud", it is just your ignorance of the correct process you should have followed before accepting these charges.

Taiko

OP, this sounds very similar to the HA freeholder I'm dealing with for my block. If I were to say that, since their latest rebrand in April 2017, their new name begins with V, would I be correct?

The fire alarm sounds like it needed S20 consultation, which judging by this may not have happened. Definitely worth kicking back on as such.

If it is the same HA, I can confirm that, at least in my case, they were charging residents for work that was not undertaken. I have a tribunal date with them shortly for our block, for which they've employed a QC as their representation.

dead_ringer

Hi well reading replies i dont think people get my point.
For example one itm last year on the list was rubbish clearence. This was from an allyway at the rear of gardens to their rented property.
It was completed in 20 mins by their own staff and lorry. WE (4 so flats) were charged £ 900.
When contested it was part of our block??

Another item on the list of repairs was to repair a communal light on the stairway landing £300.
Later in the list it added £7.00 (parts) for same job. The lamp just needed a new bulb.
Another item was outder floodlight for car park area. Replaced with pir led garden type £500.

Replace 12v backup battery in smoke vent £300
And many many more....

dead_ringer

And Taiko, yes it is v- Livid !

stator

What you have are anecdotes.
What you need is evidence

Taiko

Ok, I'm lucky in that I'm aware of the HA that the OP is dealing with here I guess.

From my own enquiries, each job is charged by them based on the schedule of rates https://www.m3h.co.uk/products/schedules/m3nhf-schedule-of-rates

I found this out when I approached the HA for receipts/invoices for the works done on my block, only to be told that they didn't have these as they were undertaken by their own direct labour organisation, and that this is what they based the charges on. Unfortunately, they were also unable to provide me with a copy of the SOR theirselves, as they considered the information commercially sensitive, so declined to provide it. I had to purchase my own copy, which in turn demonstrated that the charges they had raised were not in line. I have the photographic evidence of the works not being undertaken for my estate, so I'm hoping the OP has similar.

Obviously I think the language in the OP is a bit of an issue, but appreciate the emotions involved.

I think a good starting point though would be checking the lease for what they are permitted to do, and define what they've charged for which is out of scope. You're probably looking at unreasonableness more than anything though. Light bulbs are a favourite of theirs, and they recently tried to hit for £900 for 3 of these, despite doing similar for the same area less than 12 months ago.

eddddy

dead_ringer wrote: »

Hi well reading replies i dont think people get my point.

As far as I can tell, I completely got your point in post #3.

dead_ringer wrote: »

For example one itm last year on the list was rubbish clearence. This was from an allyway at the rear of gardens to their rented property.
It was completed in 20 mins by their own staff and lorry. WE (4 so flats) were charged £ 900.

So if you think this charge was unreasonable, pay it under protest and challenge it (and any other charges) at a tribunal.


One way to challenge it would be to ask rubbish clearance companies for quotes for doing a similar job (e.g. 2 people to take away a truckload of rubbish).

If rubbish clearance companies can do the job for, say, £500 - it's not reasonable for the HA to charge the leaseholders £900 for the job.

(And/or if you think that your lease doesn't require you to pay for the rubbish clearance, you can challenge that at the same time.)