Raising a complaint against property factor

CakeOrDeath

Hi everyone,

I wanted to get advice on raising a complaint against my property factor. For some time there has been significant water ingress in my flat because some of the joints/pointing in the brickwork has degraded and when the gutters overflow in heavy rain the water runs down the building and into the leaking joints. I have raised this issue with the factors but they have stated that they don't believe this comes under commons repair because I'm the only one affected, even though I would have thought bricks are part of the overall structure of the building and therefore common. I have spoken to several builders about it to get an assessment of the damage and repair work needed and all of them have said "Why are you dealing with this, shouldn't your building factor fix this?" I have also spoken to contacts at Glasgow Housing Association and the council and all have said this does come under commons repair. I'm speaking to a solicitor next week to get a better idea of where I stand legally on the issue (this is free advice through the Law Clinic at Strathclyde Uni which I can't recommend highly enough!).

Has anyone out there raised a complaint against there factor over a similar issue and how did you go about resolving the problem? Is there any more info I should gather before raising my complaint? I'm going to email the factor asking for the agreement between them and the flat owners so that i can see the exact wording and also ask them to point out parts which they believe support their position. I don't know if I'll hear back because they've started ignoring my calls and emails, and I even went through their complaints procedure and they didn't respond at all!

Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated!