Remus Grounds Maintenance - New development: Query on Price hike/can we change?

OvernightOats

Hello Forum,

Apologies if this is in the wrong area or cover via another thread - I have tried to track other posts down without success. 
We are a development of around 75 homes with on large green area, with 3 small children playthings on; and a small patch of grass on a corner. We have a few trees on the green, its nothing terribly fancy but large enough for children to play on. 
To start with, as part of the house purchase; we had to sign an agreement with Remus. We had no opportunity to be part of the company as home home owners do, this was organised through David Wilson. 
Remus started with a charge of £175 per year and within 2 years of this they are now asking for £235 which seems quite a jump.
There are several of us in the development that are really quite unhappy with them; they are constantly under estimating their fees and asking for more money to cover this. It feels that they are both unregulated and free to take from us what they feel they want to. Its making everyone really quite nervous. 
We are happy to pay a reasonable charge but this feels crazy. 
I'd like to know what we can do? Are there any regulatory bodies for grounds maintenance? How would we request the local council take responsibility for this? Can we do something as a community to either change Remus or collectively just not pay? We all feel lost and at the mercy of a company that do seem to be free with their charging estimates, and we have no support. 


Any guidance, help, redirection would be great! I have searched several forums and they all seem to be very much the same bleak story. There are lots of us in the same boat but there seems to be limited help.

Warm regards and thanks

AdrianC

OvernightOats said:

We are a development of around 75 homes with on large green area, with 3 small children playthings on; and a small patch of grass on a corner. We have a few trees on the green, its nothing terribly fancy but large enough for children to play on. 
To start with, as part of the house purchase; we had to sign an agreement with Remus. We had no opportunity to be part of the company as home home owners do, this was organised through David Wilson.

Perfectly normal for modern developments. Somebody has to pay to maintain all those common areas, including the unadopted roadways and drainage.

Remus started with a charge of £175 per year and within 2 years of this they are now asking for £235 which seems quite a jump.

They provide you with annual accounts, including budget vs actual, right?
How much is building up a sinking fund?

How would we request the local council take responsibility for this?

The answer is almost certainly no, even if the infrastructure has been constructed to adoptable standards.

Can we do something as a community to either change Remus or collectively just not pay?

Almost certainly not. The management structure is in either your lease or covenants, which we can't read from here.

You agreed to this when you bought the property. If you didn't realise it, then your solicitor is at fault for not making you aware. At a guess - the developer "recommended" them?

daveyjp

OP.  It IS  an unregulated part of the property industry and some companies will use that to their advantage.  Do not stop paying, there are sometimes draconian remedies in covenants which you may not be aware of.

At the very least get everyone who is complaining to write to their MP to get Government to start working on some regulation to bring these arrangements in line with leasehold property protection for service charges, which includes providing accounts on where money is going.

gwynlas

You might be able to set up a Right to Manage company and appoint your own managing agent but given the number of leaseholders this might take a lot of commitment on those interested in change

princeofpounds

OP - is your house a leasehold or freehold? Are the service charges being made by a freeholder, by a covenant, or some kind of rentcharge? 

What you can or cannot do depends on the exact legal relationship you have with the common areas and the agent who is maintaining them.

OldMusicGuy

You need to read the terms of your transfer of land document when you bought the house. This will highlight what you have agreed to. It will set out how the common areas are managed and how costs are charged for them.

If the houses on the development are freehold but the common areas are owned by a separate freeholder (the developer often retains this or sells it to an investment company), then you cannot form a residents management company/right to manage company to take over the ownership of the freehold (which leaseholders of flats can do, I'm not sure what happens if houses are sold on a leasehold basis). So you are completely at the mercy of the management company and the freeholder.

For freehold houses, you will have agreed to a set of restrictive covenants when you bought the house which set out your rights. These will detail how you replace the management company. In most cases, you cannot. The only person that can change the management company is the owner of freehold for the common areas. On my last development, if the residents were unhappy with the management company we could not change them but we could ask for an independent arbitrator to be appointed to review their performance (which would have been costly to us).

If the property management company is doing things wrong you can report them to the Property Ombudsman. This takes time and effort but is free. However, the Ombudsman will only rule on very clear breaches of the various codes and covenants. They are not an arbitrator so will not help you if you think they are "charging too much". We took our property management company to the Ombudsman on two occasions to correct incorrect billing and charging for work not done. Both were clear breaches of the covenants in the transfer of land.

As others said, the council will never take this over. Bottom line is that you should have reviewed all of this before you bought the property. But the best thing to do now is to really understand what you actually agreed to because then you will know where you stand.

On our last development we formed a residents association which allowed us to coordinate our actions (like taking the property management company to the Ombudsman). However, it has no legal standing and doesn't give you any rights (like a residents management company). Also, I would imagine getting 75 households to form a residents association would be a lot of work.....