Service Charges - query

Altior

Perrins were the HA solicitors, my original solicitor is no longer practicing. If I get a chance I will copy and scan the docs but that ought to be enough to satisfy GUHG that I shouldn't be paying any service charge outside of the buildings insurance.

The letter is just a series of numbered points sent to Perrins, including that point 3 that I quoted. For example, point 2 reads Please note that our client wishes to make a market value election. Answer 2 - Noted. The SDLT clause will therefore remain in the lease.

The response letter from Perrins reads We refer to your letter of 23rd February which arrived during the writer's absence from the office. We now respond to your enquiries as follows:

And then proceeds to respond to the numbered points correspondingly, including the one about no service charges that I quoted for point 3.

eddddy

Altior said:

Perrins were the HA solicitors, my original solicitor is no longer practicing. If I get a chance I will copy and scan the docs but that ought to be enough to satisfy GUHG that I shouldn't be paying any service charge outside of the buildings insurance.

Hmmm... I'm not sure it will work out that way.

It's the lease that specifies whether you need to pay service charges, not a letter from the HA's solicitor.

If what the HA's solicitor said in the letter was wrong, you might be able to make a claim against the HA for misrepresentation. But I wouldn't bank on it succeeding.

I think the HA's response might be along the lines of "Sorry we put incorrect information in that letter. However, you (and your solicitor) had a copy of the lease at that time, so you should have read it and realised that the information in our letter was incorrect."

Altior

As well as the 'plain English' confirmation from the vendor's solicitors, the other factors are that the reality tallies with the information provided, ie that I haven't been charged any additional service charges for 12 years. Plus, there aren't actually any other services being delivered, and the services they've added to the new listing don't apply to my property or associated small communal forecourt. Also, someone new at GUHG reviewed my account last October, corrected some errors they identified and still didn't add or mention any service charges.

It's certainly a rather interesting situation, out of the blue. It's not a means issue and £90 odd a quarter isn't breaking the bank. But I don't have a habit of paying for things I never agreed to, and aren't receiving either! 

Hopefully I will be contacted tomorrow to put some meat on these bones. 

Altior

Once again, many thanks for your input eddddy.

The last factor I missed off was that the original lease was completely flawed anyway, as it was a template for a flat in a block and not a coach house. Something that was an oversight from the solicitors of both parties (and me, admittedly!)

eddddy

Altior said:

Please provide the service charge information proposed for this property. Answer from Perrins - The property is not required to pay any service charges. Only buildings insurance of £38.40 per annum.
 

Thinking about this more, you need to look at the context of that question. It sounds like they are talking about just one year. Probably your first year of ownership.

i.e. You won't have to pay service charges for the first year, and your buildings insurance will cost £38.40 for the first year.


It's extremely unlikely that they are talking about every year going forward. They wouldn't be saying that your buildings insurance will be £38.40 per year for future years. So they're probably not saying that you will have no service charges for future years.

Altior

I received my call back today, it was the Service Charge Officer from last year, I'm unsure if he is still a Trainee or not.

Disappointingly, he had not gone through the details I provided yesterday before calling me, said there was nothing wrong and was going to explain what the individual charges were for. So I went through all of this again, and added the info supplied from their solicitors back in 2011 that I only discovered after the original call yesterday. He took that information away and said he needed to discuss with his TL.

Upshot is that it was a system error on their side, and it was flagging up my property incorrectly for these additional charges. This will be corrected, a new listing issued with just the insurance and associated costs with calculating the insurance, and they've recorded something on their systems on my account that should mean that the errors should not reoccur.

A satisfactory ending, but quite time consuming to resolve on my part. I did say to the chap that mistakes will happen and I wasn't upset with him on the phone, only pleased that it was eventually cleared up.