Service Charge Increasing by 35%

LeagueOfWolf

I will need to check the lease because we've never had carpet before it was just concrete style flooring. 
Most likely installed with the intention of  replacing every 5 years and charging us £9000 or more every time no doubt 

Jonboy_1984

If it was never there and not in the lease you might be able to dispute that at a tribunal for £100 as betterment, but not sure if it can be done retrospectively if they did a section 20 early enough.

eddddy

LeagueOfWolf said:

Thanks for your responses I asked the management company they said they have adhered to section 20 consultation and did send us comparisons for all the stated works I don't recall any of this. 

Just to clarify...

A section 20 consultation is quite a detailed process. You should have received 3 notices for each piece of work...

• First stage – a notice of intention to do the works
• Second stage – notification of estimates obtained by the landlord
• Third stage – where applicable, notification of award of contract
  

And the law requires specific pieces of information to be included in those notices, and specific timescales, etc.

If you received these, but ignored them - you probably have little chance of winning a challenge.

But if the landlord / management company didn't send you all 3 notices, you probably have a strong chance of winning a challenge.


(And don't necessarily believe the management company when they say they did everything correctly.)



See: https://www.lease-advice.org/faq/what-is-the-section-20-consultation-process-for-major-works/

LeagueOfWolf

Thanks for your help, I was unable to find previous letters from previous years to check for section 20 but I would assume they abide by these laws which I didn't keep on top of the invoices etc which is my own fault really. I think I will 100% keep on top of it all from now on - lesson learnt!

I also managed to somehow dig out my leaseholder documents and read through everything and it says as directors we can vote in/out the block management. It is the majority of the voters of the directors who have attended the annual meeting. So I told the other leaseholder and he asked to be appointed as director 

Then the craziest thing happened the Lady who owns our Block management team emailed me to say they have decided to resign her company from managing our block because of the other leaseholder being appointed to director as she said hes really aggressive towards her.

They've been arguing for many years and in our yearly meeting they kept shouting at each other - it was really hard to speak and felt awkward being there. When I left the call early she ended the call straight away - since she could not handle his aggression towards her - so he didn't get to explain all his points. I do feel a little bad for them both since the other leaseholder is so frustrated at the the price hikes he directs it at her and shouts at her. I think block management is a tough job and there are loads of things involved but he asks her for explinations but doesn't accept them. He started calling her a narcissists and saying she was swindling all our money etc lol I think this was the last straw... 

It's changed what I was going to do. My idea was to try to keep with them, then try to reduce costs and then decide next year! I found some commercial cleaners who came over to review the block and they ended up being almost 1/3 of the cost of our existing cleaners which would have cut our service charge down by £1800 in total! That's £150 less per person....which can be done in diff places. 

They leave by February. So now, I look for a new block management company since the other leaseholder is a lot older and bit tech adverse.... wish me luck lol