Nightmare freeholder refusing permission - help!

NameUnavailable

princeofpounds said:

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?

Right to Manage gives you just that, but you still have to enforce everything in the lease. Permissions for works would still have to go back to the freeholder.

OP - if your neighbours are thinking of selling it would be worthwhile having a conversation with then and explaining the issue you've got. The freeholder could make it difficult if not impossible for your neighbours to sell by refusing to respond to solicitors enquiries, providing the lease pack etc. I expect that he will make a similarly unreasonable demand to them for providing info (and worth noting that there is no limit to what he might ask for, £3-500 is typical, he might ask for £5000!!).

Get your neighbours on side and try to tackle this bully together!

I went through something similar myself, eventually having to sell up to save my sanity!

princeofpounds

NameUnavailable said:

princeofpounds said:

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?

Right to Manage gives you just that, but you still have to enforce everything in the lease. Permissions for works would still have to go back to the freeholder.

I had to check this, but that's actually not quite the case, although the situation is not that much better. It seems that approvals are handled by the RTM company, but that the landlord can object, and if they do it has to go to Tribunal. However, I should imagine that this can only be done a limited number of times without good basis for opposition, otherwise the landlord may start to be considered vexatious. It would probably allow the RTM company to determine things like fees for approval as well, instead of the landlord.

See Section 20 here: https://www.lease-advice.org/advice-guide/right-manage/

Sarah20

OP - if your neighbours are thinking of selling it would be worthwhile having a conversation with then and explaining the issue you've got. The freeholder could make it difficult if not impossible for your neighbours to sell by refusing to respond to solicitors enquiries, providing the lease pack etc. I expect that he will make a similarly unreasonable demand to them for providing info (and worth noting that there is no limit to what he might ask for, £3-500 is typical, he might ask for £5000!!).

Get your neighbours on side and try to tackle this bully together!

I went through something similar myself, eventually having to sell up to save my sanity!

I think he tried to charge my neighbours a fee in the region of £40K to do a lease extension so he's definitely in the habit of making things difficult. They're currently going down the formal route to get this done ahead of selling but will have a chat to them about options. He does need someone to challenge him on his outrageous behaviour!

Sarah20

I had to check this, but that's actually not quite the case, although the situation is not that much better. It seems that approvals are handled by the RTM company, but that the landlord can object, and if they do it has to go to Tribunal. However, I should imagine that this can only be done a limited number of times without good basis for opposition, otherwise the landlord may start to be considered vexatious. It would probably allow the RTM company to determine things like fees for approval as well, instead of the landlord.

See Section 20 here: https://www.lease-advice.org/advice-guide/right-manage/

That's really useful to have this information, thank you; definitely one to speak to the neighbours about.

NameUnavailable

princeofpounds said:

NameUnavailable said:

princeofpounds said:

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?

Right to Manage gives you just that, but you still have to enforce everything in the lease. Permissions for works would still have to go back to the freeholder.

I had to check this, but that's actually not quite the case, although the situation is not that much better. It seems that approvals are handled by the RTM company, but that the landlord can object, and if they do it has to go to Tribunal. However, I should imagine that this can only be done a limited number of times without good basis for opposition, otherwise the landlord may start to be considered vexatious. It would probably allow the RTM company to determine things like fees for approval as well, instead of the landlord.

See Section 20 here: https://www.lease-advice.org/advice-guide/right-manage/

I think I was correct in what I said - whilst the RTM company handles the request/s they must inform the freeholder and if they object then you are back to square one, so with a difficult freeholder like this case having RTM isn't going to change much for the leaseholders unfortunately.