Sudden £9k section 20 notice - can I do anything?

CSI_Yorkshire

Simonon77 said:

It does seem ridiculous. Lets be honest, any home owner doing this themselves would be up a ladder, and I  have never seen gutter cleaning companies scaffolding a whole house to do it. Even a cherry picker would be fine as the first floor work is less than a day.

I'm sure it is all part of the councils health and safety stuff. Is there any way you can arrange to get the work done yourself instead of accepting their quote? Pretty sure you can find people who will do it a lot cheaper

There's a very big difference between what a homeowner might consider acceptable if they were doing it themselves, and what a contractor (or more specifically the contractor's insurer) requires.  Not to mention the HSE if there was an accident - they don't really care if you hurt yourself but they'd come down hard on a company who they thought might have been taking an easy but unsafe route to save money.

CSI_Yorkshire

CSI_Yorkshire said:

Simonon77 said:

It does seem ridiculous. Lets be honest, any home owner doing this themselves would be up a ladder, and I  have never seen gutter cleaning companies scaffolding a whole house to do it. Even a cherry picker would be fine as the first floor work is less than a day.

I'm sure it is all part of the councils health and safety stuff. Is there any way you can arrange to get the work done yourself instead of accepting their quote? Pretty sure you can find people who will do it a lot cheaper

There's a very big difference between what a homeowner might consider acceptable if they were doing it themselves, and what a contractor (or more specifically the contractor's insurer) requires.  Not to mention the HSE if there was an accident - they don't really care if you hurt yourself but they'd come down hard on a company who they thought might have been taking an easy but unsafe route to save money.

https://press.hse.gov.uk/2023/02/28/city-council-fined-after-school-caretaker-dies/

https://press.hse.gov.uk/2021/10/14/company-fined-after-employee-sustains-serious-injuries-in-fall-from-height/

https://www.shponline.co.uk/in-court/1-1m-fine-after-ladder-fall/

edit:  all falls from ladders of 5 meters or less - less than the height of the gutter of a 2 storey property.

pannonica

Simonon77 said:

It does seem ridiculous. Lets be honest, any home owner doing this themselves would be up a ladder, and I  have never seen gutter cleaning companies scaffolding a whole house to do it. Even a cherry picker would be fine as the first floor work is less than a day.

I'm sure it is all part of the councils health and safety stuff. Is there any way you can arrange to get the work done yourself instead of accepting their quote? Pretty sure you can find people who will do it a lot cheaper

I'm not sure a cherry picker would work as I don't think it'd fit down the side of the house to get into the back garden. Any other options other than ladder, cherry picker or scaffolding?

I'm gonna suggest they get quotes from other contractors in my response, let's see what they say.

pannonica

eddddy said:

Perhaps a good starting point would be to ask the council what their criteria is, for accepting a contractor that you nominate.


One reason that the council will be super-fussy / super-cautious about choosing a contractor, is that the council could be liable for the contractor's shoddy work.

For example...

• The contractor paints the windows - but 6 months later the paint is cracked and peeling
• As a leaseholder, you complain to the council, saying it needs to be redone
• The contractor refuses to fix the problem free of charge, and won't refund any money
• Then the council try to charge you again, so you take them to tribunal saying it's not reasonable that you have to pay for window painting twice in 6 months (and the tribunal agrees).

So it's the council who end up out of pocket.

Yeah, I'm prepared for them to be fussy about who they'll consider an acceptable contractor. I'm just hoping they won't reject outright the idea of using someone else. 

At the moment I'm thinking to suggest a few options in my response but also to say that if they have any particular requirements (about insurance or whatever) then to let me know and I'd be happy to have a look for someone that fits their requirements.

Simonon77

CSI_Yorkshire said:

Simonon77 said:

It does seem ridiculous. Lets be honest, any home owner doing this themselves would be up a ladder, and I  have never seen gutter cleaning companies scaffolding a whole house to do it. Even a cherry picker would be fine as the first floor work is less than a day.

I'm sure it is all part of the councils health and safety stuff. Is there any way you can arrange to get the work done yourself instead of accepting their quote? Pretty sure you can find people who will do it a lot cheaper

There's a very big difference between what a homeowner might consider acceptable if they were doing it themselves, and what a contractor (or more specifically the contractor's insurer) requires.  Not to mention the HSE if there was an accident - they don't really care if you hurt yourself but they'd come down hard on a company who they thought might have been taking an easy but unsafe route to save money.

I appreciate that and realise the HSE implications, but scaffolding a whole house at a cost of over £5000 to paint some window sills and re-silicone one window is ridiculous. No homeowner would pay that, and it's only because its the council ( who aren't paying for it ) they can suggest it. 

pannonica

Just on the scaffolding cost, the number next to 'scaffolding' in the initial list is £5236, but the actual cost is actually a lot higher than that. I didn't fully appreciate this at first, but once you add the 35% that they put on top of everything ("preliminary costs", "management and overheads" and "profit") that becomes £7069. They then add another 10% to this just for general "contingency", plus a casual extra £1000 for "unforseen scaffold adaptations". Then they also add their standard 35% to this extra £1000, so the full total for the scaffolding is actually £9125 before VAT, or £10950 after VAT.

Something I'm curious about here is who's going to actually pay the other half of all this. I'm liable for half according to the letter and presumably the other freeholder (the council) would be liable for the other half, but are the management company really going to bill the council for this amount? 

eddddy

pannonica said:

Something I'm curious about here is who's going to actually pay the other half of all this. I'm liable for half according to the letter and presumably the other freeholder (the council) would be liable for the other half, but are the management company really going to bill the council for this amount? 

It's probably easier to think of it like this:

• The freeholder (i.e. the council) will pay the full amount, but based on the terms of your lease, they can recharge 50% of the cost to you. (And the lease probably allows them to charge you before the work starts)

• So effectively, the council ends up paying 50%

If there's a management company, they'll usually be people employed by the council to do the admin work, etc,  on behalf of the council.



You could say that the council having a management company is a bit like you having an admin assistant.

For example, your admin assistant might say to you "The windows look a bit dodgy", and you reply "OK - Can you prepare a work schedule and get some quotes, and tell me how much I'll have to pay, etc?"


(That's how things work with a standard lease between 2 parties. But, if you have a tri-partite lease between 3 parties, it's a bit different.) 

pannonica

Right, that makes sense, but what I'm curious about is whether there could be any potential for any pushback from whatever department of the council is responsible for paying for this. I can how see in a more typical leasehold situation where all flats are held by leaseholders the council would be quite relaxed about them charging inflating prices like this, but here it's the council who's responsible for paying half of it.

Surely it would be in the interests of the council (or whatever department is responsible) to keep the costs down? In this case it seems like the interests of the management company and the council don't quite line up.

Simonon77

Most councils are pretty incompetent. More likely it goes through about 5 different departments, none of whom really know what they are doing and just approve it because it came from the other department and it's not their money they are spending anyway.

I imagine they also have their 'approved contractors' who can quote anything they want without it being questioned as the council rely on them to tell them how much it costs anyway

pannonica

I'm just finishing my response to the section 20 letter today (deadline is in 2 days). I was looking through the lease and I noticed this section: 


Sounds like this is saying that if I don't agree with what they're proposing, we have to get an independent surveyor in, with the cost shared between each of us. Am I misreading this? If this is true this would certainly seem to work in my favour.