Fleecehold Massive Hike in Fees

[Deleted User]

Contact your MP and maybe your local paper. Fleecehold is an issue that they may take an interest in.

GixerKate

Sorry to hear you are facing this and I don't have any answers particularly I'm afraid, I'm in a similar boat.  I'm also on a new build estate and have been for just over two and a half years.  We do have a Residents Association in place with just over 50% of the homes included, it has mainly been useful for getting movement on problems with the estate but doesn't give us ground to reject the fees unfortunately.

We have looked into taking over the management of the estate ourselves but we've stumbled on the mechanism for enforcing payment plus we have the issue of some people living on the estate who block anything proposed by the RA purely because they are suspicious of anyone who they perceive as being in a position of power.  Running an RA can be a bit of a headache, especially if there are quite a few homes and if there is a mix of different types of housing, not everyone will get on and will have an axe to grind.

comeandgo

Postik said:

I think accounts are due 9 months after the company's year end.  6 months if it's a public limited company.  So they don't have to file them the day after their year end - it takes time to prepare them.  When you download them you might have trouble making sense of them unless you're an accountant, and I wouldn't expect them to go into minute detail, they will just contain headline figures.

The other mistake was believing any reassurances whatsoever from Berkley's solicitor.  They are on Berkley's side and just want to sell you a house.

Any rises in service charges have to be accounted for and detailed accounts have to be provided each year.

I really don't think this statement helps you.  Any profit, loss or expenses have to be "accounted for" by a business.  But as far as official accounts go, this can simply be a line entry.  So if the service charge goes up, then the figure in the accounts needs to go up.  They could argue this is being "accounted for".  The fact that the management company need to provide "detailed accounts" each year is the same as any other limited company in the UK.

The accounts required are not the company accounts of First Port but the management accounts of the OPs estate and they will be detailed.  There is no time requirement.