License for Alteration- advice for Leaseholder

gentlecleanser

Hi,
We would like to add a single story extension to rear of our flat which we own on a leasehold basis. When we purchased the flat, we had our solicitor look over the lease to see if there was anything prohibiting us from doing this in the lease. The lease states we will need to apply for written consent from the freeholder and that consent cannot be unreasonably withheld. The solicitor advised us we will need to apply for a License for Alteration with the freeholder.

We had the plans drawn up by an architect and have submitted these plans to council for planning permission.
On the the 17th February 2019, we submitted the plans to our freeholders management agency. After 1 week we had not heard anything so i followed up with an email, i then received an Out of office reply to say the person who deals with the property would now be away for another 2 weeks. In the week after he returned to the office, I followed up with several emails and phone calls (no answers to left messages).
Eventually i received an email to say he had been ill and this would now be passed to the surveyor.
After a week of following up to see if there was anything from the surveyor, we received an email (from the person at the management agency) to say that surveyor is now ill and this has now been passed to another surveyor....
We are now in process of chasing this surveyor.

I am looking for advice regarding time scales and unreasonably withholding consent.

It has now been 6 weeks since we submitted the plans and we have not had one bit of feedback to advise how the management agency wants to proceed (more info needed, estimate of fees we need to pay, time scale for how long consent will take etc etc). We have simply had email of excuse after excuse for delay or not answering our calls or have been passed to some one else.

The planning permission has come through and the builder is waiting to book in a building start date but we have no solid information to tell them

What should we do now?? Has anyone else been through this?

SmashedAvacado

A bullish owner would go ahead on the basis that consent had been unreasonably delayed. You have a right to improve your property as a matter of law. However, a buyer of your property will want to see record of formal consent, so i suggest you prepare a licence to alter and fully populate it, and sign it and send it to the landlord and indicate that this is the basis you are going to proceed with the works.

SallyDucati

SmashedAvacado wrote: »

A bullish owner would go ahead on the basis that consent had been unreasonably delayed. You have a right to improve your property as a matter of law. However, a buyer of your property will want to see record of formal consent, so i suggest you prepare a licence to alter and fully populate it, and sign it and send it to the landlord and indicate that this is the basis you are going to proceed with the works.

Is that really the right way to go with a leasehold property though? If works were done without full consent, when the freeholder/management company are responsible for ensuring the upkeep of the fabric of the whole building, I could forsee a whole can of worms coming the OPs way if something unfortunately went wrong.

Personally I wouldn't have taken a risk like that when I owned my leasehold flat. I know how unresponsive managing agents can be - I would possibly be looking to formally complain via their procedure to get things moving.

davidmcn

Six weeks is nothing. By all means threaten further action if they're required not to unreasonably withhold or delay consent, but I wouldn't do it at risk - what if you complete the works and then they say they don't like the foundations?

Tom99

Is the land you are going to build on within the demise of your flat?

gentlecleanser

Tom99 wrote: »

Is the land you are going to build on within the demise of your flat?

Hi Tom,
No the land is not within the demise of the property. It is to be an additional room added and the back wall of the property knocked through (A supporting beam is to be put in place where this was the support wall for the rear). So building out into the rear garden.

Thanks

gentlecleanser

SallyDucati wrote: »

Is that really the right way to go with a leasehold property though? If works were done without full consent, when the freeholder/management company are responsible for ensuring the upkeep of the fabric of the whole building, I could forsee a whole can of worms coming the OPs way if something unfortunately went wrong.

Personally I wouldn't have taken a risk like that when I owned my leasehold flat. I know how unresponsive managing agents can be - I would possibly be looking to formally complain via their procedure to get things moving.

Thanks for the reply.
Yes i agree, We do not feel comfortable taking the risk of building anyway as it is a lot of money to pump into the property only to go through the heart ache (and cost) to returning it to the original state, not to mention the difficulty of selling which we hope to do in 5 years times.

I have looked for a formal complaints procedure but there is nothing on the managements agency website to state there is one.
They management agency is a member of the property Ombudsman, and i am aware that we can make a formal complaint to them but at the same time, we are aware of not wanting to annoy the agency to the point where they make things even longer for us!

So other than contact them, all i can see to do is ask the guy who's looking after it from the Agency what their official complaints procedure is as we feel this has taken an unreasonable amount of time. But again i doubt we would get a response or risk making it worse for ourselves!

What would you count as an unreasonable time? 2 months since submitting the request? Does any one have any experience with how long it has taken them to obtain/ issue a lease? Or am i being unreasonable?

Slithery

How much did you offer the freeholder for this piece of land you wish to build on?

Perhaps upping your offer will make them move quicker?

Tom99

gentlecleanser wrote: »

Hi Tom,
No the land is not within the demise of the property. It is to be an additional room added and the back wall of the property knocked through (A supporting beam is to be put in place where this was the support wall for the rear). So building out into the rear garden. Thanks

I will re-phrase the question. Is the rear garden you are going to build on within your demise? If not you cannot build on it.
I would also double check your lease because it would be unusual for a structural addition to be allowed subject to consent not being unreasonably withheld. Normally the structure of the building including the exterior walls are not part of the demise but are common parts, repaired by the landlord.

eddddy

gentlecleanser wrote: »

No the land is not within the demise of the property.

So you're saying that the land that you want to build on isn't included your lease? So it's been retained by the freeholder?

If that's correct, step 1 would be negotiating a price for adding that land to your lease.

"Unreasonably Withholding Consent" isn't relevant here. The freeholder can refuse to sell the lease of that land to you for any reason they like, and/or ask you to pay any price they like.

SalsaDanca

I suspect that the surveyor has been appointed to estimate how much the extension would add to the value of the flat. Once the managing agent knows how much profit you might make by building the extension, they'll know how much they can charge you for the piece of garden that you'll need to buy before you build the extension.