Nightmare freeholder refusing permission - help!

davidmcn

CookieMonster said:

pinkshoes said:

Since when did you need a freeholders permission to change a bathroom or kitchen??? 

Since before this happened, since you ask:
Flat owner has £600,000 London home SEIZED by freeholder | Daily Mail Online

That seems to be more to do with the leaseholder failing to defend the action rather than the merits of the case. Also appears to have been more to it than merely failure to get consent for works.

princeofpounds

'Demised' means allocated. There will be a whole other section of the lease where it talks about who is responsible for which parts.

cattie

Windows you will usually need permission for with flats as they affect the appearance of the building externally. Sometimes buidings consisting of flats are seen where there's a mish-mash of different styles of window replacements & they do really look quite awful.

If you are going to replace the windows like for like, then I can't see that the freeholder can refuse permission for them to be replaced. Your freeholder does sound clueless as there'd been no need for you to seek permission to update kitchen & bathroom as no stuctural changes were happening.

MaryNB

davidmcn said:

CookieMonster said:

pinkshoes said:

Since when did you need a freeholders permission to change a bathroom or kitchen??? 

Since before this happened, since you ask:
Flat owner has £600,000 London home SEIZED by freeholder | Daily Mail Online

That seems to be more to do with the leaseholder failing to defend the action rather than the merits of the case. Also appears to have been more to it than merely failure to get consent for works.

I read up about that a while ago. He appeared to have done work on structural elements of the property (holes through external walls and rendering) and refused to pay the service charge. Seems there's a lot more to the story than the DM article which is of no surprise whatsoever.

Sarah20

princeofpounds said:

'Demised' means allocated. There will be a whole other section of the lease where it talks about who is responsible for which parts.

From what I can see, the lease says that the lessor demises 'the premises' unto the lessee, which are described as follows:

Unless I'm reading it incorrectly, it says that I'd be responsible for everything in the property apart from the windows? It even says 'save for installed pipes and wires' which would indicate that these would also be demised to me so I'd be able to update/adjust these as needed? Not sure how he'd know if I changed electrics, plumbing etc as nothing is stated within the lease as to what the original state of these was upon my purchase of the property.

greatcrested

Whew! Twopages and finally the lease wording....! Blood/stone...

Sarah20

greatcrested said:

Whew! Twopages and finally the lease wording....! Blood/stone...

Previous wording in the lease can be seen on the first page and I’ve been trying to find and post the relevant sections while working. Do you have any advice?

leonj

The kitchen and bathroom is just furniture, not part of the structure of the building

princeofpounds

Hi again Sarah, thanks for the clarification.

OK, so you do appear to have quite a restrictive lease in a few senses. 

By my reading, you are demised:
- the ceilings (but not the joists or beams above it)
- the floors, including the joists or beams below it
- the interior faces of the walls
- the interior doors and door frames
- I agree with you that it seems to indicate you are demised installed wires and pipes, but it is expressed in legalese

You are not demised:
- The window frames (and by implication the windows themselves)
- The space below the floor or above the ceiling, except for the joints, beams and by implication wires and pipes mentioned

You cannot make any structural alterations without consent (including areas that are demised to you). What is a structural alteration?

LAS has the following to say about that:

"Structural alterations usually involve work to the load-bearing parts of the property, but can include non-load-bearing parts if the work would alter the essential appearance and shape of the property. Non-structural alterations are work to the fixtures and fittings in the property."

That includes load-bearing walls, but also things like beams, lintels, probably joists too. Ultimately it would be for a court to decide what counts as a structural alteration. I cannot imagine any court being interested in using screws to put up cabinets, for example.

But there has been a case where, for example, someone cutting a modest hole for the exhaust on a new boiler was found to have made an alteration (Raja v. Aviram 2016). Interestingly, however, the judge basically said (and I'm paraphrasing here) there was no way forfeiture or any meaningful measure would be considered for something relatively trivial, and directed the parties to settle. So there are two points here: 1) These obligations are interpreted fairly by-the-letter of the lease, but 2) the landlord may have 'won', but probably didn't win anything much in practical terms, except for dragging the tenant through the process.

So within all that, you can judge what kind of work you can potentially do. The windows - nope. But you can probably do quite a lot in terms of the kitchen and bathroom as long as you aren't intending to change much of what's behind the walls or floors. So you could replace the sink, bath, toiler, shower etc, but moving them might be tough. You could put up cabinets or re-tile, or replace the light fittings. But you can't easily move your boiler etc.

The question also is - is it worth doing all of this, and watching the trades like a hawk to make sure a stray hammer drill or reciprocating saw doesn't go in the wrong place to make something worse? Or have your freeholder harass you whilst this is ongoing, convinced that you're breaking rules because you wanted his permission originally?

As I see it, you have a few options:

- Fold. Either do nothing, or comply with his exploitative demands to get permission and just get the job done.

- Sell. You clearly have cash in your pocket. Perhaps you can get something similar or better elsewhere, get away from a bad freeholder.

- Fight. Unfortunately with Tribunal your only option, this will be a chunky 4 figure sum if you want legal representation (and you probably would as they make it quite technical). Sadly, justice is not an economically-sensible route, most likely.

- Adapt. Change your plans so that you can be pretty confident you aren't making any structural changes. Get on with it, the freeholder may never notice or just get bored with hassling you about it.

- Flip the tables.

a) Revisit this idea of collective enfranchisement; it would be cheaper than going through this nonsense every time someone wants to do an alteration. I suspect that when you were approached about it by your neighbour, there was a good chance the costs were misrepresented to you (probably by accident), unless you are paying lots of ground rent (are you?).

Their lease was presumably much shorter than yours. There would have been a significant cost for lease extension. The cost for collective enfranchisement for a very long lease with low ground rent is quite modest - often the legal fees will cost as much.

If you had organised buying the freehold together, you would have performed the enfranchisement, and the other owner would have had to contribute an extra payment to extend their lease (in reality you would likely agree to create new leases with identical, long terms, and the other neighbour would have paid more of the total cost). But it wouldn't surprise me if you were just told a total cost, that muddled the cost of the lease extension together with the real underlying cost for buying the freehold. You don't pay to extend your neighbour's lease!

Yes, it might cost as much as going to Tribunal to get the alterations approved. But you only have to do it once, and the costs are shared.

Hopefully, they will still be interested. How many flats are in the building? How many leaseholders might be interested in participating?

b) Cheaper-still, think about right-to-manage. It may not be a perfect solution - IIRC the freeholder does get a vote in the RTM company, but you can potentially sideline them. It may or may not give you the powers you need to approve structural alterations, I'm not sure.

So... what's your gut reaction to those options?

Sarah20

princeofpounds said:

Hi again Sarah, thanks for the clarification.

OK, so you do appear to have quite a restrictive lease in a few senses. 

By my reading, you are demised:
- the ceilings (but not the joists or beams above it)
- the floors, including the joists or beams below it
- the interior faces of the walls
- the interior doors and door frames
- I agree with you that it seems to indicate you are demised installed wires and pipes, but it is expressed in legalese

You are not demised:
- The window frames (and by implication the windows themselves)
- The space below the floor or above the ceiling, except for the joints, beams and by implication wires and pipes mentioned

You cannot make any structural alterations without consent (including areas that are demised to you). What is a structural alteration?

LAS has the following to say about that:

"Structural alterations usually involve work to the load-bearing parts of the property, but can include non-load-bearing parts if the work would alter the essential appearance and shape of the property. Non-structural alterations are work to the fixtures and fittings in the property."

That includes load-bearing walls, but also things like beams, lintels, probably joists too. Ultimately it would be for a court to decide what counts as a structural alteration. I cannot imagine any court being interested in using screws to put up cabinets, for example.

But there has been a case where, for example, someone cutting a modest hole for the exhaust on a new boiler was found to have made an alteration (Raja v. Aviram 2016). Interestingly, however, the judge basically said (and I'm paraphrasing here) there was no way forfeiture or any meaningful measure would be considered for something relatively trivial, and directed the parties to settle. So there are two points here: 1) These obligations are interpreted fairly by-the-letter of the lease, but 2) the landlord may have 'won', but probably didn't win anything much in practical terms, except for dragging the tenant through the process.

So within all that, you can judge what kind of work you can potentially do. The windows - nope. But you can probably do quite a lot in terms of the kitchen and bathroom as long as you aren't intending to change much of what's behind the walls or floors. So you could replace the sink, bath, toiler, shower etc, but moving them might be tough. You could put up cabinets or re-tile, or replace the light fittings. But you can't easily move your boiler etc.

The question also is - is it worth doing all of this, and watching the trades like a hawk to make sure a stray hammer drill or reciprocating saw doesn't go in the wrong place to make something worse? Or have your freeholder harass you whilst this is ongoing, convinced that you're breaking rules because you wanted his permission originally?

As I see it, you have a few options:

- Fold. Either do nothing, or comply with his exploitative demands to get permission and just get the job done.

- Sell. You clearly have cash in your pocket. Perhaps you can get something similar or better elsewhere, get away from a bad freeholder.

- Fight. Unfortunately with Tribunal your only option, this will be a chunky 4 figure sum if you want legal representation (and you probably would as they make it quite technical). Sadly, justice is not an economically-sensible route, most likely.

- Adapt. Change your plans so that you can be pretty confident you aren't making any structural changes. Get on with it, the freeholder may never notice or just get bored with hassling you about it.

- Flip the tables.

a) Revisit this idea of collective enfranchisement; it would be cheaper than going through this nonsense every time someone wants to do an alteration. I suspect that when you were approached about it by your neighbour, there was a good chance the costs were misrepresented to you (probably by accident), unless you are paying lots of ground rent (are you?).

Their lease was presumably much shorter than yours. There would have been a significant cost for lease extension. The cost for collective enfranchisement for a very long lease with low ground rent is quite modest - often the legal fees will cost as much.

If you had organised buying the freehold together, you would have performed the enfranchisement, and the other owner would have had to contribute an extra payment to extend their lease (in reality you would likely agree to create new leases with identical, long terms, and the other neighbour would have paid more of the total cost). But it wouldn't surprise me if you were just told a total cost, that muddled the cost of the lease extension together with the real underlying cost for buying the freehold. You don't pay to extend your neighbour's lease!

Yes, it might cost as much as going to Tribunal to get the alterations approved. But you only have to do it once, and the costs are shared.

Hopefully, they will still be interested. How many flats are in the building? How many leaseholders might be interested in participating?

b) Cheaper-still, think about right-to-manage. It may not be a perfect solution - IIRC the freeholder does get a vote in the RTM company, but you can potentially sideline them. It may or may not give you the powers you need to approve structural alterations, I'm not sure.

So... what's your gut reaction to those options?

Hi there, firstly, thanks so much for taking the time to respond with such a detailed response; I really appreciate it.

I'd prefer not to go down the tribunal route due to the expense and time it would take. I also would like to stay where I am for now so wouldn't want to sell at this stage. I think you're right re the collective enfranchisement, my portion of the overall cost was probably wrapped up in the total figure which made it seem far more expensive, so this is something that I could potentially explore again (I'm paying £200 per year in ground rent by the way). My neighbours (just one other within a Victorian conversion) are having problems liaising with him on extending their lease so it may be something they'd be willing to explore again (although they are looking to sell soon). However, again this will take some time and a significant expense and I would prefer to move forward with the renovations ASAP and invest in those.

Due to the condition of the kitchen/bathroom fixtures, fittings, etc now starting to impact on quality of living (the boiler is 25+ years old!), I would need to make the changes and as I had sent him details of the proposed renovations (including a slight reposition of the boiler and swapping the sink and toilet), he'll be aware of what the plan is. As he is clearly unreasonable and has already sent a checklist form asking for confirmation of everything that has been done to the property so far, I suspect he will be monitoring the situation to make sure I don't do anything outside of what the lease permits.

I've made an appointment to speak to the LAS next week and although, I'm sure they'll state similar options to what you have, it'll be good to hear their thoughts. At this stage, it might be easier (and more cost effective) to bite my tongue and include a nicely worded letter with that checklist stating that I'd prefer to go back to the original offer of settling it informally for £600. Failing that, attempt to get the paperwork he's requesting.