Repair bill on leasehold flat

Poppy3008

Hope someone can help me.  I have a Leasehold property which I rent out.  It is one of 4 flats in the building (the only one which is privately owned) and back in 2016-17 the whole roof was replaced.  The first I knew about this as when I received a bill for nearly £10,000.  I called the housing association (landlord) and questioned this amount as this is a quarter of the entire bill and asked for a breakdown.  I was told it was being investigated.  This went on for a few weeks and eventually I heard nothing.  I then called about a year later for a statement and they said the major repair bill was on hold and not to worry about it.
I today logged onto my account (first time to be able to do so) and I see the bill is still there and I have been slowly paying it every month - maybe £1.20 or so.  When I called today I was told a letter had been sent out confirming that the bill was correct and needed paying.  I never received this letter.
I would still like to see a breakdown of costs - is this an acceptable request?  I feel I am being shafted here.  I got the impression when I first called that the Housing Association thought they had been shafted too!
Does anyone think a roof would cost £40,000?  OK, its bigger than a house but not that big!
Appreciate nay advice/suggestions/help!  Thanks

NameUnavailable

There are a few issues here. First of all you need to read your lease.

Ultimately if the roof was replaced and there are 4 flats, your share is going to be 25% (assuming the lease states that you are liable for an equal share of any costs).

Before the work started the freeholder should have served you with a Section 20 notice of major works. The rules around this are quite strict and if the freeholder hasn't followed them you could argue that you are not liable to pay. I think it would be unlikely for a housing association freeholder to get that kind of stuff wrong, but then again.......

You are entitled to see the accounts for the service charges - as part of the Section 20 process you should have been provided with details of the works and the estimates.

Norman_Castle

Its possible some letters have been sent to the property and not to you.

anselld

You are paying off a £10,000 bill at £1.20 per month.  That makes no sense; it would take 700 years to pay off at that rate!  Are you sure that is what the £1.20 is for?   Does your account actually show £10,000 in arrears?

 

HampshireH

Norman_Castle said:

Its possible some letters have been sent to the property and not to you.

This.

Does your HA have your correspondence addresses to send dupliate letters to?

They have to go through the section 20 process so ask for copies of paperwork from all three stages.

If the process has been followed then your time to dispute it was during the in consultation. If the letters went to your property because you don't have an alternative set up this is your responsibility and not a defence.

If they went to your property and through error by the HA, you could complain but I doubt it would be a defence. 

If they didn't consult they have a problem.

It doesn't seem feesible you are paying £1.20 towards the replacement. It certainly wouldn't be an agreeable amount from a HA point of view for obvious reasons. 

eddddy

As others say, if a section 20 consultation was correctly carried out, and your lease says you are responsible for 25% of repair costs - you probably have no basis for challenging this bill.


If no section 20 consultation was carried out, the most you have to pay is £250 towards the roof replacement. (Unless the requirement for roof replacement was an emergency or extremely urgent, and there wasn't time to do a section 20 consultation.)


TBH, the fact that the HA have been dithering over payment for a few years suggests to me that they may "have a problem" with this. Maybe they realise they haven't followed the correct processes. Otherwise I think they would have been persuing you for payment more quickly. (But that's just a guess.)

Poppy3008

Thank you all for your replies.  I have found a letter explaining works were due to take place and that further letters would be sent yet I never received these.  I don't have an issue paying my share its the amount which seems overly high.  I shall ask for all copies of the paperwork sent out so I can check the addresses and dates and see exactly what was issued.