Leaseholder Service Charge doubled - questionable items?

Mr._Mime

I'm asking this on behalf of an elderly friend who bought a flat in a 50+ units local authority/housing association block under Right to Buy.

The service charge for this year has without warning doubled. My friend literally just received a huge bill, no explanation or anything. We suspected it was likely for fire-safety related costs after the Grenfell disaster, and requested a cost breakdown.  The costs list is very comprehensive, and indeed there were a lot of fire related upgrades. My first question is, is there a formal procedure to be able to pay the unexpected excess in chunks over time?

However, seeing the list has shed light on other costs that seem weird, and not necessarily 'communal' (eg repairs to specific flat's windows and balconies). There's less than a handful of owner occupiers in the 50+ block, the other residents are all housing association's tenants who will never see or bear the cost of the service charge. So I wonder if the block is being run as if it's still all housing association, and things are being charged to the few owner occupierss that wouldn't ordinarily be?

Some example 'odd' costs...

Investigating leaks in flats. Sometimes someone leaves a bath to overflow, or sometimes it's a faulty pipe several floors up. The costs are for the investigations.

Repiars to weather-cracked asphelt on a resident's balcony.

Fixing a resident's window which won't close properly.

CCTV footage recovery (running to several hundred pounds). The CCTV was installed in the block after my friend bought the flat, so isn't mentioned in his lease, and it's run and maintained by an external company. The footage recovery was at the request of the housing association to identify anti-social behavoiur perpetrators and trespassers. To what end I'm not sure.

Lastly, one of the big fire-safety costs (£10k) is tidying up all the CCTV cabling with fire rated fixings, and to identify and remove all redundant cables. The CCTV was installed about 5 years ago. I wonder if it could be argued that this just wasn't installed properly in the first place, and rectification should not be a cost borne by leaseholders?

Would be grateful to hear thoughts on any of the above and learn more about how Service Charges work. Thanks!

csgohan4

sadly the disadvantages of owning your RTB, you are responsible and take a share of all repairs and maintenance. Just because they own it doesn't mean they pay more disproportionately. It is shared out amongst all flats, just so that most of those are HA owned. 

Mr._Mime

Hi csgohan4 - yes, I understand the costs are shared proportionaly and my friend is only paying 1/50th of the total annual costs, but we're unclear if some charges should be in there and classed as communal.
Eg fixing lights in walkways on diffrent floors that my friend never uses but has access to, fair enough, but the balcony and window repairs seem different.

eddddy

The lease will state what repairs and maintenance the freeholder (i.e. the council) is responsible for.  And the lease will probably say that your friend is responsible for paying 1/50th of the cost of those repairs.

It's possible that the lease says the freeholder is responsible for repairs to windows and balconies. So the downside is that your friend has to pay 1/50th of the cost of the repairs to "other peoples" windows and balconies.

But the upside would be that, if your friend's windows or balconies need repairing, he would only have to pay 1/50th of the cost.


Regarding the CCTV - 'private sector' leases don't normally allow the freeholder to make improvements and charge leaseholders for them. But I believe that council leases do allow that. I guess you need to read the lease to see. (If you want, you could ask the council to tell you which clauses in the lease allows them to make improvements, and charge leaseholders for them.)

If the council were 'negligent' when the CCTV was installed - for example, they failed to have it done in a 'fire-safe' way, or they failed to check that the wiring was done properly - your friend might have a case for not paying because it was the council's error.

Mr._Mime

Thanks edddy - by council, do you mean the housing association? (I'm not sure if councils in England do actually own any properties these days, they all seem to be run by housing associations?).

Ragarding negligence of CCTV installation, I suppose we would have to try and find building regs from that time period. It could be that fire safety wasn't mentioned so much pre-Grenfell.

Lunchbox

Balconies are usually ‘owned’ by the freeholder and the owner of the flat has a ‘right to use’ them, and the responsibility of repair falls to the freeholder but it’s then recharged to all leaseholders via service charge. Similarly in many leases, window and external door frames are the freeholder’s responsibility, but the glass is the leaseholder’s, so I’d assume this is how theirs is set up. They should check though. The benefit as eddddy points out is that if they ever need expensive repairs to their windows or balcony, it’ll be split into the general service charge and they’ll only have to pay a small portion.

NameUnavailable

Windows are usually the freeholders responsibility, if not you would end up with a block of flats with a mish/mash of different styles of windows as they get replaced over time.

You can challenge costs but you need to have proof that work is unecessary or more costly than it should be. Often the cost of taking such a claim legal and getting expert witnesses etc., will be much more than the service charges and there will still be some amount to be paid (i.e. you might get some element of the work ruled out and reduce the bill by 25% but at what cost in legal fees?).