You are here: Home / 2012 / Archives for November 2012

Metro Central Heights wins largest ever right to manage action

November 30, 2012 by

Metro Central Heights: turned into flats by Berkeley Group, freehold sold to Tchenguiz and managed by Peverel … now freed through a brilliant right to manage action

The biggest ever right to manage case has been won at the multi-storey, 422-apartment Metro Central Heights in London’s Elephant and Castle, but Peverel has been retained as managing agent.

Its performance will be reviewed after 12 months and then the residents will decide whether to offer the management contract up for tender.

The site, which used to be Alexander Fleming House and was the old headquarters of the Ministry of Health, won its RTM action earlier this month.

The residents were handheld through the process by the Right to Manage Federation, which in spite of its name is a commercial company offering RTM to all comers. Its founder is Dudley Joiner, who was associated with the Carlex campaign.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: News, Peverel Tagged With: , ,

John Bercow buys £935,000 pad in Plantation Wharf – after embittered seller despairs of living there

November 29, 2012 by

John and Sally Bercow have bought a riverside mews house at Plantation Wharf (PIC: PA)

John Bercow and his wife Sally are buying a property at troubled Plantation Wharf in Battersea, where pensioner Dennis Jackson won a reprieve on having his flat forfeited yesterday following a dispute over service charges.

A grace and favour riverside pad in the Palace of Westminster is not enough for the Bercows, who exchanged on a £935,000 mews house a week ago.

“The Bercows have been trying to buy my place for four months and are obviously pretty keen,” said seller Sam Fryer, 46, a publisher of yachting magazines. “It was not even on the market when I was approached by the estate agents asking whether I would sell.”

[Read more...]

Filed Under: News, Plantation Wharf

Plantation Wharf pensioner wins 28-day reprieve on forfeiture

November 28, 2012 by

… but the legal feeding frenzy continues with a £4,000 bill

Dennis Jackson outside Wandsworth County Court this afternoon

Dennis Jackson, 73, escaped forfeiture today of his £800,000 flat at the Plantation Wharf in Battersea.

In a five-minute hearing Deputy District Judge Cole brushed aside arguments from Alexander Bastin, the barrister representing the freeholders and Plantation Wharf Management Limited, who demanded forfeiture of Jackson’s lease.

But Helen Turnbull, an open access barrister found for Jackson by LKP yesterday, successful argued that as Bastin and his team were appealing against the LVT decision that restricted their legal costs the issue was not concluded and therefore Jackson’s case should be adjourned. She also argued that it should be adjourned anyway to give Jackson time to contest the action.

To Jackson’s surprise, a representative of Prudential, his mortgage company, also was present asking for an adjournment in order to protect its £175,000 mortgage on the property. Jackson had thought Prudential would not be present.

Meanwhile, the legal costs gravy train kept on flowing with the freeholder’s extended legal team presenting a £4,000 estimated bill for the hearing.

Bastin argued that these should be paid. They would cover his fees, those of the solicitor Janice Northover, who was present but silent, her assistant who helps carry her bag, and even Phillip John, chief executive of managing agents Tideway, who at the LVT hearings successfully demanded £250 an hour in order to explain his “complex” accounts that the tribunal said were “very difficult for a lay leaseholder to understand without some kind of proper explanation”.

In spite of Bastin’s repeated objections, the judge ruled that costs were to be delayed and reserved.

The adjournment gives Jackson time to consider his options in the case. “That was as good a result as I could have got today,” he said.

Filed Under: News, Plantation Wharf Tagged With: , , ,

Housing Minister Mark Prisk holds meeting with LKP – but keep pestering MPs!

November 28, 2012 by

After years of banging on a closed door, Leasehold Knowledge Partnership / Carlex held a meeting with Housing Minister Mark Prisk (right) yesterday.

But leasehold activists are urged to keep pressing MPs (and copy us in to your correspondence!) As a result of the meeting, the minister is reviewing the following:

  • How right to manage is being frustrated by truculent freeholders, particularly of retirement developments;
  • How managing agents pool leaseholders’ funds in opaque bank accounts, rather than hold separate accounts for individual blocks as was envisaged in section 152 and 156 of the Commonhold and Leasehold reform Act 2002;
  • How freeholders secure full legal costs in litigation with leaseholders through administrative charges, whereas leaseholders legal costs are capped at £500.

The Westminster meeting was held on the prompting of Sir Peter Bottomley, Conservative MP for Worthing West, who has involved himself in leasehold disputes both in his constituency and beyond it.

He was accompanied by Sebastian O’Kelly and Martin Boyd, of Carlex / LKP, and Stephanie Smith, the barrister who won the “legal torture” case this year involving pensioners at Oakland Court in Worthing. Prisk, a former chartered surveyor, was assisted by civil servants Sally Blandford and Ian Fuell, who both handle leasehold issues in the Department of Communities and Local Government.

The meeting was told that the protections of leasehold law are not working, particularly in the retirement leasehold. O’Kelly outlined the cases of retirement developments which are repeatedly being frustrated in exercising the right to manage. Parliament’s intentions are being thwarted by freeholders who will use trifling legal arguments to stop right to manage. As LVTs set no precedent, their decisions are widely inconsistent and right to manage will be granted in one case and refused in another even though the arguments opposing it are the same.  The delays and repeated appeals that freeholders adopt often mean that original applicants are dead by the time right to manage is achieved. In these circumstances it is hugely difficult to keep the residents united in seeing the action through.

Further meetings with the Ministry of Justice will result from this.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: News Tagged With: ,

Pensioners in third escape attempt from Gurvits

November 25, 2012 by

Elim Court, in Plymouth has been asking for right to manage since June 2011. Several pensioners who began the action have since died

UPDATED WHERE INDICATED JANUARY 12 2013

Two retirement developments in Plymouth are engulfed in right to manage actions against London landlord and managing agent Joseph Gurvits.

It is the third attempt for residents at Elim Court, many in their mid to late eighties, when they face a contested RTM action at the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal on December 11. Nearby Regent’s Court has won RTM, but the issue is being appealed to the Land Tribunal for a hearing in March.

Some of the original applicants at Elim Court, who began demanding RTM in June 2011, have since died. It is understood Gurvits is deploying a solicitor and has instructed counsel to fight the action.

Gurvits and his associate Israel Moskovitz, who operate out of the same address in north London, picked up the freehold of Elim Court nearly two years ago and added it to the portfolio within Avon Freeholds (of which Moskovitz is a director). It was decided to appoint Gurvits as the managing agent in the form of Y and Y Management, even though he is based 240 miles from Plymouth. Gurvits is better known to many London leaseholders as the owner of Eagerstates.

Since the arrival of Gurvits/ Moskovitz, Elim Court has been beset with controversy and 29 out of 34 residents, many of whom are infirm, are demanding the right to manage.

A recent source of acrimony has been a £20,000 electronic door entry system that Y and Y declared was necessary. Two weeks ago the proposal was halted and property manager Elena Andreadis came down from London “to launch a charm offensive at a meeting to persuade the residents to drop their right to manage action”.

“Amusingly, nobody turned up,” added Keith Phillips, OBE, a former Whitehall fire and anti-terrorism expert, who is a director of the RTM company. [Read more...]

Filed Under: News Tagged With: , ,

Battersea MP told to stay out of Plantation Wharf dispute

November 24, 2012 by

Battersea MP Jane Ellison (left) has been told not to interfere in the Plantation Wharf dispute where pensioner Dennis Jackson, 73, faces the forfeiture of his £800,000 flat on Wednesday.

There is a real possibility that this will happen. He is fighting the action alone and his mortgage company, owed £175,000, to date has not indicated it would be involved.

Ellison wrote to Bryan [Howard] Lewis, the ex-solicitor with an appalling professional record including a criminal conviction involving dishonesty, who chairs Plantation Wharf Management Limited. The residents have nominally controlled the company since October last year.

But Ellison has received a reply from Mike Benton, a director of PWML, but also an employee of Cube Real Estate, the freehold owner at Plantation Wharf.

“You will appreciate that this is a contractual dispute between Mr Jackson and this company [that is, PWML], which is currently the subject of ongoing proceedings in the Wandsworth County Court. Accordingly, it would be inappropriate to correspond with you on a matter that is the subject of judicial proceedings,” he writes.

But the wider question is why the residents’ management company should assist Cube Real Estate pursue this action, running up what an LVT has described as disproportionate “colossal” sums in legal fees in doing so?

Even the most phlegmatic Plantation Wharf resident might be concerned that their management company is doing the freeholder’s bidding and running up huge legal fees.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: News, Plantation Wharf Tagged With: ,

Baroness Gardner urges government to back commonhold

November 22, 2012 by

Last Monday in the House of Lords, Baroness Gardner of Parkes (left) urged the government to back residential commonhold as a substitute for leasehold.

Specifically she asked whether commonhold could be included in the £10 billion government debt guarantee to stimulate infrastructure investment.

But Lord Newby, a Liberal Democrat peer in the Treasury, replied that: “As commonholds typically consist of privately owned properties and given that, in any event, commonholds are relatively rare, it is unlikely that any commonhold scheme will come forward under the guarantees programme.”

Commonhold – which is the system of tenure that exists everywhere in the world outside England and Wales – did not take off after its introduction in the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act in 2002.

Mainly this was because during the property frenzy of those years no buyer paid the slightest attention to the type of tenure he was buying. Property ‘investment’ was a one way bet and everyone just piled in.

Developers don’t like commonhold because with leasehold they enjoy two bites of the cherry: selling the leasehold flat to a homeowner and then selling off the freehold to whoever will pay the most for it.

The upmarket Berkeley Group has realized how short-sighted this was and how damaging it could be to its reputation.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: News Tagged With: ,

Answer to a parliamentary question about Leasehold Valuation Tribunals … 189 irrelevant documents

November 20, 2012 by

Yesterday in the Commons, Sir Peter Bottomley asked the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government when he last met people connected with improving the operation of the law relating to leaseholder disputes and access to the Leaseholder Valuation Tribunal.

The reply civil servants supplied to Housing Minister Mark Prisk was an internet link to 189 irrelevant documents. LKP spent an hour wading through the dross to find that eight referred to 137 meetings attended by the Secretary of State.

But none of these meetings was linked to LVTs and leaseholder disputes, which is  the issue Sir Peter raised.

It seems even Parliament cannot cut through the public sector gloop to discover more about this incredibly powerful, expensive and virtually secret tribunal service.

Filed Under: Leasehold Valuation Tribunal, News

Plantation Wharf residents demand extraordinary general meeting to stop pensioner losing his home

November 20, 2012 by

Plantation Wharf was built 18 years ago, but it was only in October last year that the residents took over the management company that had been set up on their behalf

Leaseholders at Plantation Wharf are demanding an Extraordinary General Meeting to halt the legal action to forfeit the £800,000 flat of pensioner Dennis Jackson, 73.

Leaflets are circulating at the prime Battersea development overlooking the River Thames, where Nigella Lawson has her TV studio kitchen and where Commons Speaker John Bercow is in the process of buying a £935,000.

Jackson faces court action on November 28. It is the final stage of a protracted dispute over £9,000 of service charges that began in 2009 when Plantation Wharf Management Limited was controlled by the site’s freeholder. Since October 2011 the company has been controlled by the residents, but the board supports continuing the very expensive legal action.

One resident has written to the board: “My strong feeling is that, as this is such an important issue, the shareholders MUST have a say in this action, and Plantation Wharf Management Limited must have an explicit mandate from the majority of the shareholders for repossession.”

[Read more...]

Filed Under: News, Plantation Wharf Tagged With: ,

Marathon House celebrates its ‘first’ LVT victory – £425 of legal costs

November 20, 2012 by

Marathon House is another prime London site that has dumped Peverel

For the third time the Tchenguiz freehold company Proxima GR has failed to win an LVT action claiming costs for its legal team to inspect a right to manage application. The residents of Marathon House, in  Marylebone, central London, which until obtaining RTM earlier this year was managed by Peverel and is now managed by LKP-accredited managing agents HML Andertons, are celebrating what they ominously refer to as “our first LVT win”.

The bill was only £425.89 for one hour and 50 minutes of time of the in-house legal team of Estates and Management, an associated Tchenguiz company. But the residents at Marathon House – built in 1960 as the Castrol HQ – successfully argued that it should not be paid as there was no evidence of a contractual arrangement between Proxima GR and Estates and Management. They won the case with a ruling on November 16, on the same grounds as two previous LVT actions involving Proxima GR and other RTM companies.

The residents say they were unaware of the bill until they were faced with being taken to the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal. [Read more...]

Filed Under: News Tagged With: , ,

Pay first, argue later: Plantation Wharf shows how LVT’s £500 limit on legal costs can be bypassed

November 15, 2012 by

If you are in dispute with your freeholder over service charges (see Plantation Wharf case), pay the sum and fight the action retrospectively. Make sure that you are the applicant of the action, rather than the respondent.

The case of Dennis Jackson at Plantation Wharf raises the prospect of  freeholders seeking to circumvent the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal’s £500 limits on legal costs.

Since publishing the article, two leaseholders who own apartments worth several million pounds, have contacted LKP for advice on this issue.

Many leases do allow landlords to pass on their legal charges, but the LVT has the power to limit them being passed on as service charges provided leaseholders have reasonably brought a case and have been able to show that the charges have been unreasonably incurred.

What the Jackson case shows is that if a landlord – in this case a management company – is seeking recovery of a debt he may be able to claim legal costs as administrative charges under Schedule 11 of the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act. This would then circumvent the LVT’s ability to limit costs.

It is important not to withhold service charges for any reason to avoid this use of the law. Paying the service charge does not mean you accept liability to pay that amount – you must indicate that you do not accept the liability – and it can be challenged at the LVT retrospectively.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Leasehold Valuation Tribunal, News, Plantation Wharf Tagged With:

Pensioner who defied ‘complex’ service charges faces forfeiture of his £800,000 flat at Plantation Wharf

November 9, 2012 by

Plantation Wharf, Battersea, where pensioner Dennis Jackson faces having his home forfeited over a service charge dispute

By Sebastian O’Kelly

A pensioner faces having his £800,000 flat in one of London’s prime riverside developments forfeited by court order for refusing to pay service charges that he could not understand.

Astonishingly, the court action on November 28 is being pursued by the pensioner’s own neighbours in Plantation Wharf, Battersea – who may shortly include John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons, and his wife Sally, who are negotiating the purchase of a flat.

Most of the residents have no idea that this drastic action – the absolute last stage in a leasehold dispute – is being carried out in their name.

The legal action was begun by Plantation Wharf Management Limited when it was controlled by the freehold owners at the mixed residential and commercial complex of 13 blocks. But residents took control of the company in October last year and the resident directors have ‘unanimously’ decided to continue the action.

In a further twist – also unknown to the residents – the chairman they elected to head Plantation Wharf Management Limited, Bryan [Howard] Lewis is a disgraced ex-solicitor, who has a criminal conviction for dishonesty. There is no suggestion that Plantation Wharf Management has acted improperly at any stage in the proceedings.

Following the intercession of the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, local Battersea MP Jane Ellison has written to Lewis and his fellow directors urging restraint and to settle the issue without making the pensioner homeless.

Sir Peter Bottomley, MP for Worthing West who is intent on ending abuses in leasehold, has today urged Lewis to halt the litigation, with its spiralling costs.

“My direct request to you is that you see how to limit the costs he [the pensioner] may face, that you stay the action to take control of his property for forced sale and that you review whether the additional costs since you took responsibility have been as limited as possible.”

Baroness Gardner of Parkes, a strong campaigner for leaseholders, referred to “this absolutely tragic case” at last night’s meeting of the Federation of Private Residents Associations in London. She also met and commiserated with the individual concerned.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: News, Plantation Wharf Tagged With: , ,

‘Drive your MPs mad to change leasehold,’ Gardner tells FPRA

November 8, 2012 by

Baroness Gardner says agenda is moving towards leasehold reform, with FPRA chairman Bob Smytherman (right)

Full speeches have been added to the end of this article

Around 250 leaseholders met in London tonight to hear Baroness Gardner of Parkes say that reform of the troubled sector is very much on the political agenda.

“But to see this through you must keep on campaigning: make a real nuisance of yourselves,” she told the audience. “You have to drive MPs nearly mad but in the end they will have to listen. And the best ones of all to contact are those in marginal seats.

“Politicians need to understand that there are nearly two million leaseholders in this country and that is a significant number of votes.”

Baroness Gardner was speaking at the annual meeting of the Federation of Private Residents’ Associations, and the event was sponsored by News on the Block magazine.

The event followed last week’s highly successful Carlex / LKP Westminster briefing for MPs, hosted by Sir Peter Bottomley.

Present in the audience was former Labour MP Keith Hill, who is the new ethical regulator for the trade body the Association of Residential Managing Agents.

“That is a good scheme but it will only be of use if your managing agent is a member of that organisation. What we need is statutory regulation of this sector where we have seen such scandals.”

[Read more...]

Filed Under: News Tagged With:

LKP / Carlex leasehold websites top 70,000 page views a month

November 5, 2012 by

The Leasehold Knowledge Partnership and Carlex websites have confirmed their position as a vital information resource for ordinary leaseholders.

Figures from Awstats show that the combined readership of the LKP / Carlex websites topped 70,000 page views in October. This is an astonishing number and shows that there is growing interest among ordinary leaseholders for information that is not beholden to any commercial interest in the controversial property sector.

The number of visits to the sites was just under 20,000: Carlex achieving 10,463, while LKP was 8,927.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: ,

Young barrister who won ‘legal torture’ case is nominated for award

November 2, 2012 by

Stephanie Smith

The young barrister who represented for free the pensioners in the notorious ‘legal torture’ case at Oakland Court in Worthing is up for an award.

Stephanie Smith, a barrister in her twenties, defeated Justin Bates, who was acting for the freehold-owning landlord and is a more senior lawyer in her own Arden Chambers.

Bates is an expert on leasehold law who frequently represents freeholders in actions against leaseholders. He was instructed by Laceys solicitors of Bournemouth, who style themselves “honorary solicitors” to the trade body, the Association of Residential Managing Agents (ARMA).

The freeholders repeatedly challenged whether the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal should hear the case. When the pensioners eventually won the case in May this year, two of the original applicants had died.

The local MP Sir Peter Bottomley condemned these legal stratagems as “legal torture” on the LKP website and in the House of Commons. The case was referred to during the LKP / Carlex briefing at Westminster for MPs, hosted by Sir Peter earlier this week. [Read more...]

Filed Under: News, Oakland Court Tagged With: , ,