Demand for ground rent on our freehold house

Nicksy1

We have recieved a demand for payment from PBS (premiere block management) Ltd in respect of ground rent arrears for 2017-18, to be paid Xmas day, in accordance with our lease. And have been given a balance bright forward. S166 has been filled out on the back of the demand in tiny print.

We have no lease. We have a freehold house that we bought >6 years ago. It did have a covenant with a rentcharge clause mentioned, but the solicitor assured us this had been paid off by a previous owner (2 previous owners tried to build additional dwellings in the back garden which would have been in violation of covenant). However the solicitor was unable to determine who owned the covenant.

Now for the crazy bits: the rent arrears demanded for 2017-18 is 1p (yes 1 penny) and balance b/f is 10p, so total 11p demanded. The postage cost was 39p.
The S166 is addressed to The Occupier, not our names.
The landlord is stated as: East Central of . Yes, there are blank spaces there!
The "remittance advice slip" lists only the address for cheques and has actually printed over the page footer. Shan't look like remittance advice to me...
There is poor editing in the S166, such as the word gas instead of has.

Anyone has dealings with this company? Is this a scam to get us to pay the £48 for a quote to see how much it would cost to buy the lease to stop an annoying 1p bill every year? Was our solicitor wrong about the rent charge pay off and thus we defaulted on the rentcharge so we have been transitioned to a leasehold so that the landlord can secure the payment of his 1p per year?

Thanks for any help

LardyCake

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rentcharge

Sounds like a Rentcharge or Chief Rent (not to be confused with Ground Rent). Do you live in the North West or Somerset by any chance?

Your Land Registry entry (or deeds if not registered) should show this.

The good news is that after 2037 Rentcharges will all be abolished anyway, and cannot be increased in any case.

In your case I would be asking the company claiming the charge to prove they have the right to do so (ie: they own, or are acting on behalf of the owner the Title to the Rentcharge - proof may be a Land Registry reference or copy of a deed).

The DCLG route to redeem the Rentcharge is also worth investigating.

I say this because we had a company trying to claim payment of a Rentcharge when they had no right to. The Rentcharge itself was perfectly valid, but the owner of the title was unknown. We ended up using the DCLG route to redeem it and the money was "paid into court" and available to anybody who could prove to the court that they owned the title to the Rentcharge.

We then registered the Redemption with the Land Regisistry. When the company persisted with their demands (which they did) we sent them a copy of the Land Registry entry and told them their demand was unlawful and we would not be paying it.

Nicksy1

Plausible, although the letter definately says they are demanding Ground Rent from us, stating the occupier is a long leaseholder and they are collecting on behalf of the freehold landlord. It seems they also have no idea whether ours is a house or a flat because they set out two different options depending upon property type.

Perhaps this is similar to your experience, I guess we'll have to start asking the various governing bodies as you suggest

davidmcn

Are there any communal areas which you're liable for? Does the lease maybe refer to those rather than your house itself?

Nicksy1

No. 58 year old detached house with garage + private garden all way around house on a main road. 30 houses built at once at edge of farmland to form a new road, no communal amenities provided like on an estate.

ThePants999

If they really are trying to claim "ground rent", and Land Registry records confirm you own the freehold title, I'd just ignore.

FreeBear

I would suggest writing to them and demand that they provide evidence of "ownership" and on what basis they are claiming. If nothing else, it wastes their time & money in responding. If they don't come up with a satisfactory answer, they would be hard pushed to pursue a claim through the courts.