Apartment Service Charge For Elevator I dont have access to.

AverageHuman96

Hi MSE,

The building management company of the apartment I own have issued a section 20 notice stating that the elevator in the other building to me which I have no internal access to requires repairing and as a result they are wanting me to pay £1600 despite myself and everyone else in my building having no use of it.

It does state in our lease that it is defined as a public area, but we cannot access our flats with said elevator because it is in a completely different building. My building has a different postal address to the one which the lift is located, and the ground registry shows my non elevator block as a separate building.

Any advice around lease disputes and paying for things that are not used by oneself day to day?

user1977

Not really a "consumer rights" issue, better on the house-buying etc board - but the short answer is that the lease dictates which elements you are to contribute towards, whether or not you use them in practice. So the time to query why you're paying for this elevator was when you were buying the flat.

Aylesbury_Duck

It doesn't matter what your opinion is, what matters is your agreement and what you accepted when you signed it. Does it make a distinction between services in this other building and those in your building? Is it ambiguous on the matter?

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

https://www.lease-advice.org

If you don’t manage to find an answer, have a look at the above OP for free, independent advice.

eddddy

Aylesbury_Duck said

It doesn't matter what your opinion is, what matters is your agreement and what you accepted when you signed it.

Just to be pedantic, it sounds like the OP has a leasehold apartment, so the relevant 'agreement' will be the lease.

And if OP bought the the apartment 'second hand', the OP won't have signed the lease. The OP would have signed a transfer document, that assigns ownership of the lease to the OP.

By buying the lease, the OP takes over the rights and responsibilities documented in the lease. So the OP needs to read the lease to find out if it says they are responsible for contributing a share of the cost of lift maintenance.

(If the OP believes that the lease doesn't require the OP to pay £1600 towards the maintenance of the lift, the OP can challenge the Service Charge demand. That's quite a big topic in it's own right.)

MyRealNameToo

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6665011/apartment-service-charge-for-elevator-i-dont-have-access-to

We do have a lift in our building but being as our front door is on the ground floor in 7.5 years of living here we have never used it. We too however have to pay for its upkeep, its electricity etc, for us it was clear because its in the building and the lease says we have to pay an equal share of all the costs of running the building.

At our last place the deed was more complex because the our development was made up of multiple buildings but the neighbouring building that wasnt part of our development also paid 50% of the cost of our swimming pool and carpark plus the costs were divided based on square footage rather than equally. In that neighbouring building their lifts didnt go to the 1st floor and only floors 2+ contributed to the lifts though technically anyone could use them.

Ultimately it comes down to the wording of the lease, often developments do share the costs across all residents irrespective of if you happen to use them or not.

gm0

Some leases (and their templates used to make them) divide estate and per block costs into separate piles. And then share them out on some basis - block costs only in a given block, estate costs outdoors to all and then share equally or on size of flat or other adjustments.

Lift contracts both for maintenance and emergency call out at a site. Are not (usually) going to be let per lift. It's a contract for the site. So whatever the lease says. There can be an additional step where real costs of contracted and necessary things are shared/applied to blocks. And then to leases. According to what the leases require.

But the basic principle remains the same. What matters is the lease responsibilities to fund operation and replacement during the long term - say 999 years. And whether they are site wide 1/n, or per block etc.

A managing agent sometimes mucks this up. So your demand could be invalid. And equally if not more likely it could be a sad fact of life that "everyone pays for all the lifts". And it's valid. And you don't use it but you share paying for it - as do everyone else.