Coppen Estates in Sheffield - Ground Rent

Hutch2020

Afternoon,
I joined these forums after I found a previous thread on here regarding Coppen Estates.
I am currently in dispute with them.

They collect our ground rent and under the terms of the existing agreement when we purchased our current property, our house is supposed to collect ground rent from 3 of our neighbours, too. As the amounts are so low it didn't seem worth complaining.

For a long time (and by that I mean 8 years or more) I have been trying to contact Coppen Estates to discuss a number of things but it proved impossible to get in touch - they never answer the phone, never reply to voicemail messages I leave and have never responded to letter I posted (and I know the address is correct as they've cashed cheques I've posted to that address) and they have no published email address.
That is until today when I magically got through to someone on the phone!

Anyway - the chief reason I was trying to contact them was due to their payment method. Their invoices only ask for cheque payment. After opening a new bank account some years ago I no longer had a cheque book (I know I could request one, but as this is the single company I'd use it for, it seems silly). I have tried to contact Coppen so many times asking for alternate payment methods - absolutely no answer, but I continue to receive invoices now with an "admin charge re late payments" on top.
Now that I have FINALLY spoken to them and they have given me bank details to transfer money to online, I have agreed to pay the outstanding ground rent amount but asked them to waive the admin fee as the delay in payment is down to their lack of response.
Coppen have offered to halve the amount. And when I asked for a breakdown of what the administration costs consist of, they refused. 

Additionally, they want me to pay an extra £1 to them if I pay via bank transfer, again, no reason given.

So, if you've read through all of this, my questions are;
Can I refuse to pay the 'late payment fee' as I have been trying to contact them for years, so any delay in payment is down to them?
Can I refuse to pay this fee if they don't agree to provide more information on what it actually is?
Can I refuse the £1 charge the want to add on to bank transfers?

Thanks!

Hutch2020

EDIT
I've come across this wording elsewhere;

The provisions of the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002, in Section 158 and Schedule 11(4)(1), require that

“A demand for the payment of an administration charge must be accompanied by a summary of the rights and obligations of tenants of dwellings in relation to administration charges”.

eddddy

Regarding the late payment fee - it depends what happened, and how much they are charging you.

For example, if this happened...

• The freeholder (or their agent) sent you a correct ground rent demand (according to the lease and the law)

• You didn't pay it (it doesn't really matter that you tried to contact them and they didn't reply)

• The freeholder sent you a 'late payment reminder' letter

The freeholder would be entitled to charge you a reasonable Admin Fee for sending that letter.  In the past, tribunals have agreed that £50 + vat per hour is a reasonable admin charge.

So if you're being charged around £30 to £40 + vat per reminder letter, that's probably reasonable.


If you don't pay the Admin Fee,

• they might continue to send reminder letters - at £40 a time
• they might pass the matter to their solicitors - which might cost you £100+
• they might contact your mortgage lender - and they might pay and add it to your mortgage
• they might start the court process to forfeit your lease (i.e. repossess your house)

If you think the Admin Fee is unreasonable, you can challenge it at a tribunal. 

But it might be best to pay the fees first (under protest) , to stop them adding more fees on top - in case you lose, and then have to pay all the accumulated fees.

eddddy

Hutch2020 said:

EDIT
I've come across this wording elsewhere;

The provisions of the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002, in Section 158 and Schedule 11(4)(1), require that

“A demand for the payment of an administration charge must be accompanied by a summary of the rights and obligations of tenants of dwellings in relation to administration charges”.

That's correct. Are you saying they didn't send you that document?

If so the demand isn't valid. But they can address that by just sending you the demand again - with the document.

Hutch2020

Thanks!

And no they absolutely didn't send me anything along with the admin fee charge.
Their invoices are terrible, containing only the amounts due and where to post your cheques to. Nothing on the invoice about how they will add/calculate late payment charges.

There have also not been any late payment reminders - the invoices seem to turn up pretty much at random and just include a higher amount each time. So they haven't issued ANYTHING apart from the invoices they would send anyway, and have not contacted me in any other way.

So - I don't dispute that the ground rent request was valid, that all looks fine. 
I didn't pay it as I was trying to contact them, but again I'm fine with this technically making no difference to the amount owed.
They never sent any further correspondence that really justifies the additional admin cost. If they said it was 'interest' on the payment, then maybe, but the admin fee is now 200% more than the actual ground rent owed.

That said, it's still not a ridiculous amount and I suspect I will end up paying anyway (under protest, as you say) but I wanted to check my options.

AdrianC

Hutch2020 said:

Anyway - the chief reason I was trying to contact them was due to their payment method. Their invoices only ask for cheque payment. After opening a new bank account some years ago I no longer had a cheque book (I know I could request one, but as this is the single company I'd use it for, it seems silly). I have tried to contact Coppen so many times asking for alternate payment methods - absolutely no answer, but I continue to receive invoices now with an "admin charge re late payments" on top.
Now that I have FINALLY spoken to them and they have given me bank details to transfer money to online, I have agreed to pay the outstanding ground rent amount but asked them to waive the admin fee as the delay in payment is down to their lack of response.
Coppen have offered to halve the amount. And when I asked for a breakdown of what the administration costs consist of, they refused. 

Additionally, they want me to pay an extra £1 to them if I pay via bank transfer, again, no reason given.

So, if you've read through all of this, my questions are;
Can I refuse to pay the 'late payment fee' as I have been trying to contact them for years, so any delay in payment is down to them?

No.

In the meantime, you did not pay them by cheque. You could have done, but chose not to.

Can I refuse to pay this fee if they don't agree to provide more information on what it actually is?

The late payment charge? No.

Can I refuse the £1 charge the want to add on to bank transfers?

Probably.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/payment-surcharges

These regs do not just apply to charges for paying by card, but to any electronic payment.

For the sake of a quid (a year?), how much time, effort and blood pressure do you want to invest...?

rachel230

Some interesting comments and advice about Coppen Estates on the National Leasehold Campaign Facebook group..

Hutch2020

The bank charge of £1 I don't really have a problem with, it just feels rather cheeky on their part.

The admin charges do seem to require more information on their part, as per my second post, which they've not supplied. And I understood that fees had to be justified? Otherwise you can just pick a number and charge that?

Could I have paid them by cheque? It would have involved additional time and effort on my part requesting a cheque book that I didn't want. When it turned out they could accept plenty of other forms of payment, just these were never offered to me despite me asking repeatedly over years.
So, yes, I could have gone out of my way to pay via cheque but I believe it was unreasonable for them to offer only one payment method.

Hutch2020

rachel230 said:

Some interesting comments and advice about Coppen Estates on the National Leasehold Campaign Facebook group..

I'll check that out, thanks.
I've been reading some of the published cases from the tribunals about them.

AdrianC

Hutch2020 said:

The bank charge of £1 I don't really have a problem with, it just feels rather cheeky on their part.

That's the bit that the law may give you a weapon against...

The admin charges do seem to require more information on their part, as per my second post, which they've not supplied. And I understood that fees had to be justified? Otherwise you can just pick a number and charge that?

There's a difference between charging to accept payment by a certain method - and charging for the admin incurred in a payment that wasn't sent on time.

Could I have paid them by cheque? It would have involved additional time and effort on my part requesting a cheque book that I didn't want.

One request to your bank. Then you'd have a cheque book available.

but I believe it was unreasonable for them to offer only one payment method.

Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't.

There's nothing in law saying they MUST accept other forms of payment, just that they can't charge extra for them if they do.

This isn't particularly a ground rent question - this applies to any forms of payment. It could be your membership fee for a local community organisation, say, or buying tickets for a show. The only difference is that you have the option to not join that organisation or buy those tickets, whereas your only real option to not pay ground rent to the freeholder was not to buy that property in the first place.

Hutch2020

AdrianC said:

There's nothing in law saying they MUST accept other forms of payment, just that they can't charge extra for them if they do.

This isn't particularly a ground rent question - this applies to any forms of payment. It could be your membership fee for a local community organisation, say, or buying tickets for a show. The only difference is that you have the option to not join that organisation or buy those tickets, whereas your only real option to not pay ground rent to the freeholder was not to buy that property in the first place.

Fair.
I recognise there's nothing 'wrong' with being as restrictive as they are, just bad business practice!
But, as you say, it's not a company I had the luxury of choosing.

And it's also fair that this does seem to be drifting away from the original ground rent question!