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Winter of misery ends for couple in leasehold flat, thanks to LKP

April 18, 2013 by
Ade Bankole and his wife Otitokan Oluwo

Ade Bankole and his wife Otitokan Oluwo

A couple who endured squirrels rampaging in the roof and rainwater running down the walls of their leasehold flat have at last had their complaints vindicated, thanks to the intervention of Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.

Ade Bankole, 38, and his wife Otitokan Oluwo, 35, had been complaining to Peverel since October last year without success. Rivulets of water were clearly seen running down the walls of their flat, which has been damp for months. Furniture and recent decoration to the flat were completely ruined.

Now an independent surveyor has confirmed that there is a hole in the roof, as the couple had been arguing for the past six months.

The Bankoles, who are from Nigeria, could see that the roof was damaged at the 14-unit Crowthorne Lodge in Bracknell, where they own a top floor £134,000 leasehold flat.

They even produced photographs showing the water rivulets and missing tiles, and employed a contractor who reported that there was a hole in the roof. [Read more...]

Filed Under: News, Peverel Tagged With:

Been ripped off over leasehold insurance? Take your complaint to the secret ombudsman, says Peverel

April 16, 2013 by

JanetKimIlSungLKPUPDATE April 18 16.08: Peverel statement at end of article

A retirement leasehold resident disputing Kingsborough insurance commissions with Peverel has been told that she must take her dispute to an ombudsman, whose rulings are not published.

Joan Wade, who has lived at Grasmere Court in Worthing since 2003, was appalled to receive a letter from Peverel’s senior area manager on February 26 stating:

“I understand the matter of insurance commissions has already been considered by our complaints panel and you have been informed of their decision.  If you are unhappy with their decision the next stage in our complaints procedure is to write to the Housing Ombudsman.”

Alternatively, Joan and her neighbours could take their case to the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal and – very publicly – dispute thousands of pounds of commission.

This is what Janet Entwistle, Peverel chief executive, and the venture capitalist owners of Peverel are very keen to avoid. She said in June last year in her AskJanet blog:

“Historically, some insurance commissions have been too high … With regard to your particular dilemma to take this to a tribunal, that really is something I want to stop.  We must look to try and resolve all matters constructively far earlier in the process so it doesn’t get to that.” [Read more...]

Filed Under: Insurance scams, Leasehold Valuation Tribunal, News, Peverel Tagged With: ,

Dead squirrels in the roof and rivulets of water down the walls … couple feel let down by Peverel

March 28, 2013 by
Ade Bankole and his wife Otitokan Oluwo

Ade Bankole and his wife Otitokan Oluwo

UPDATE APRIL 8: 

From Mr Bankole:

Dear Mr. O’Kelly,

Still with huge gratitude for the efforts you have expended into seeing OM Property Management Company/Peverel attend to their responsibilities in effecting the repairs of our roof and other issues associated with it.

The surveyor and a contractor came along with a staff of OM Property Management Company. They were taken round the flat and the loft as well as the roof. They discovered many missing tiles, weakened tiles and few holes but they too a few
pictures of their findings and promised to send a copy of their reports within 2 to 3days.

However, the OM Property Management Company staff said it will be after the survey report that he will make a proposal of what they intend to do to put things right.

I will send a copy you their report as soon as I receive it as well as their proposal for works. Can we insist on them doing the painting of the walls and the ceiling that have been messed up by the watermarks?

Thanks for everything once again, I hope to hear from you soon.

Kind regards,

AdeOluwa Bankole.

UPDATE 17.40 April 2: Peverel has today informed LKP that it is to send a senior property manager and an independent surveyor to the site, at no cost to the residents, to investigate the damage. Full statement at the bottom of this article  

Dead squirrels in the roof, water pouring down the walls and freezing cold … it has been a bad winter for a young couple living in a Peverel managed block in Bracknell.

And there is no sign of things getting any better in spring.

“There is a hole in the roof and this morning the squirrels were the worst they have ever been,” said Ade Bankole, 38, who works for BHS. “The noise was really bad and there must have been five or six of them.”

In December a workman found a dead squirrel in the roof, which was acknowledged by Peverel. According to Judith Pooni, a customer service co-ordinator, “Access was gained by the squirrel due to the works required to the roof area.” [Read more...]

Filed Under: News, Peverel Tagged With:

Will a new spin doctor on £90,000 with ‘personal integrity’ work wonders for Peverel?

March 27, 2013 by

peverelpr-1Can this be our old friends at Peverel tarting up their image in leasehold management by recruiting a ‘Head of Communications” for £90,000 a year?

It sounds like it from the description …

“to restore the reputation of this multi-brand, market leading service provider with its customers, staff and the media”.

The job is based in London and New Forest and the new recruit will “need proven strategic, crisis and change communications experience in a highly customer focussed environment. You will also need to be able to demonstrate effective influencing skills, commercial awareness and personal integrity.”

Splendid. Only Peverel has to hunt with the hounds and side with the hare: its key customer is still the Tchenguiz Family Trust – the Tchenguiz brothers are after £300 million compo for their mistaken arrest in 2011 – that used to own it and which still controls up to 70 per cent of the freeholds it manages.

Ordinary leaseholders are insignificant by comparison, and are hardly “customers”.

Peverel has never been a customer focussed business. It is the creature of McCarthy and Stone, which took in over and then dumped it in the early 1990s when there was outrage at service charges.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: News, Peverel, RTM, Uncategorized Tagged With:

Lee Middleburgh quits Peverel ‘to pursue new opportunities’

March 4, 2013 by
Lee Middleburgh

Lee Middleburgh is leaving Peverel

A long standing member of the Peverel Politburo Lee Middleburgh from before the arrival of Janet Entwistle has resigned.

His departure follows that of Keith Edgar, former head of Peverel Retirement in December.

Peverel issued the following statement:

STATEMENT

To be attributed to Janet Entwistle:

Lee Middleburgh, Managing Director, Peverel Property Management, has decided to leave the company to pursue new opportunities.

Lee will gradually wind down during the next few weeks and an announcement about his successor will be made in due course.

Lee first joined Peverel in 2005 and over the last eight years Peverel Property Management has undergone significant growth and change under his leadership.

He also played a key role in maintaining the success of the business through the challenges faced during the 12 months the Group was in administration and I would like to thank Lee for the important contribution he has made to our plans to build a more customer focused business.

Filed Under: News, Peverel

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: , ,

After £11,500 Peverel victory, Strand Court dumps second managing agent

October 24, 2012 by

In June Leasehold Knowledge Partnership and Carlex reported how former wartime squadron leader Eric Matthews, now aged 95, had won back £11,500 off Peverel in a brilliant Leasehold Valuation Tribunal victory over insurance and other commissions at Strand Court, in Rye, East Sussex.

And last month Matthews was interviewed in the Channel Four Dispatches documentary on retirement leasehold, which gave considerable prominence to the issues at Strand Court. The case has also featured in The Oldie magazine and been the subject of considerable comment on websites, including this one and Channel Four.

But, sadly, the last year has not seen Matthews and his neighbours enjoy “the broad, sunlight uplands” that their victory over Peverel had promised.

Instead, the 50-unit retirement development has become enmired in a second dispute with Peverel’s successor: Burkinshaw Block Management.

Daniel Burkinshaw, a small managing agent based in Tunbridge Wells and a rising young star in ARMA – he was a speaker at the annual conference earlier this month – was appointed managing agent on a one-year contract in November last year.

But after only eight months, on June 25 this year, he was given his marching orders with a letter terminating his contract. Strand Court is in the process of being handed on to Housemartins Property Management.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: News, Peverel Tagged With: ,

Devastating exposé of McCarthy & Stone on TV

September 24, 2012 by

Tonight’s Dispatches programme on retirement leasehold was a brilliant example of television journalism that was extremely damaging to both McCarthy and Stone, and to Peverel.

It is excellent that Peverel’s disgraceful treatment of the pensioners at Strand Court, Rye, has been given a wider airing. Read original story here or search Strand Court on this site.

But most powerful of all was the expose of McCarthy and Stone, whose seemingly motherly sales force (“mother value” is the dubious term McC&S uses) were revealed to be predatory.

Any potential new buyers would have been appalled at the way the sales team coaxes new clients into a disadvantageous part-exchange sales process of their existing home.

Marion Bowley, in Weston super Mare, was offered £140,000 for her pleasant family house. But she sold it herself for £50,000 more after only two weeks on the market.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: News, Peverel Tagged With: ,

Head of Peverel Retirement quits

July 11, 2012 by

Keith Edgar, head of Peverel Retirement, is leaving the controversial company, which has been criticised by Leasehold Valuation Tribunals for inter-company contracts and hidden commissions.

In April it was named in a debate in the House of Lords.

Edgar’s resignation is the first indication that chief executive Janet Entwistle, who arrived in March, will clear out the top levels of the company.

This is from Edgar’s statement on the Peverel website:

“After almost 20 fantastic years at the Peverel Group I have made the difficult decision to move on to a new challenge. It’s been a great two decades with much to be proud of.

“With its new owners in place the Peverel Group is unquestionably in excellent shape, and with Janet Entwistle at the helm the business has the right person to move it forward. Janet’s commitment to customer service means these are exciting times for everyone connected with the Peverel Group.”

Filed Under: News, Peverel Tagged With:

Cameron wades into retirement row in his own backyard … but what about those who don’t live in his constituency?

July 6, 2012 by

Beautiful Burford was the unlikely setting for a retirement development seething with anger

Cameron: “not in my manor!”

David Cameron stepped into a row at a retirement development in his own Witney constituency where the freeholder is the Tchenguiz’s owned Retirement Care (BH) Limited and the managing agent was Peverel.

Both appear to have bent over backwards to accommodate the prime minister, and – remarkably – Peverel walked away without fighting the issues. Indeed, it offered an “elegant solution” to what seemed an intractable legal case.

By March last year pensioners at Windrush Court, in Burford, the “gateway to the Cotswolds”, had been mutinous for three years and some were refusing to pay service charges at the new-build development.

These had risen to £2,100 a year, residents claim, even though 17 of the houses on the site are freehold and there are only three leasehold properties.

“The service charges just kept on rising and Peverel came up with all sorts of excuses to levy fees,” claims Susan Hunt, who has sold the £285,000 two-bedroom house that belonged to her 92-year-old mother, who has moved into a nursing home.

“When people buy into this sort of retirement complex they have no idea what they are doing.”

Hunt also expressed her exasperation at exit fees, sub-letting fees and the managing agent seeking to check that tenants and new purchasers are aged over 60, which is a condition of the site.

Windrush Court, Burford

There is no evidence that Peverel did anything other than enforce the contacts and lease terms, and it claims the fees did not increase unreasonably at Windrush Court.

“The average annual increase in management fees over the last five years was 3.6 per cent,” Peverel claims. “The average annual increase in service charges over the last five years was 3.7 per cent.”

[Read more...]

Filed Under: News, Peverel, Windrush Court Tagged With: , ,

Wartime squadron leader, aged 94, chalks up £11,500 victory over Peverel

June 27, 2012 by

Sins of commission … and omission: Strand Court in Rye, where Peverel doled out contracts to Cirrus and Kingsborough without telling the residents that they were related companies

Eric Mathews, still dealing with irritants aged 94

During the Second World War, when Eric Matthews, 94, was an RAF squadron leader, he was used to chalking up downed enemy aircraft. Now he is celebrating another victory over a lesser adversary: Peverel, which has had to pay back £11,475.34p.

The money is being re-paid after a series of inter-company deals by the property management company at Strand Court in Rye, East Sussex.

Peverel was criticised by the tribunal for treating the residents with “arrogance” and for “the intentional hiding of information to which residents would have been entitled” by doling out contracts to their own subsidiaries.

Excessive commission paid to Peverel’s insurance company Kingsborough accounts for £8,029.36p of the ruling, while a new emergency call and door system – fitted by Peverel’s sister company Cirrus, and of questionable value  – involved a re-payment of £3,445.98p.

At one point, commissions charged by Kingsborough exceeded 33 per cent.

Eric Matthews saw Neville Chamberlain promise ‘peace in our time’ in 1938 … only to have precious little of it at Strand Court

“This was an excellent win over a company who thought they were dealing with a group of elderly ladies who would not dare make a fuss,” says Matthews, who as a young air traffic controller watched Neville Chamberlain in 1938 land at Heston airport after meeting Hitler, wave a piece of paper and promise “peace in our time”.

He was assisted in the action by solicitor and former university lecturer Archie White, in his mid-eighties, who was the fellow applicant on the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal action. Another resident, Mary Smith, in her sixties and a local councillor, provided the back-up team.

The respondent in the case, as always, was the freeholder, Proxima GR Properties Ltd, part of the Tchenguiz Family Trust, but the issues concerned Peverel. It was given its marching orders from the site, which had exercised “right to manage”, in November 2011, and the bills were run up in 2005-2011.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Leasehold Valuation Tribunal, News, Peverel Tagged With: ,

Janet Entwistle: ‘Problems with Peverel’s reputation, but we are in it for the long term’

June 25, 2012 by

Janet Entwistle has published a digest of the questions and answers either emailed to her or asked at her public meetings with Peverel’s leaseholders on June 12.

The comments are a frank admission that the company has “problems of reputation” and address fraught issues such as insurance commissions, sub-letting fees and service charges – subjects that have been raised repeatedly on critical websites.

The dialogue is a far deeper engagement with leaseholders than many were expecting when the meetings were announced.

Peverel was bought from administrators three months ago by the private equity firms Chamonix and Electra, and Entwistle was appointed chief executive. She says they are “in it for the long term”.

The Q&As are published on the Peverel website:

http://www.peverel.co.uk/news/questions-from-the-customer-forums/1

A selection are reproduced (unedited) here:

Q: How will you rebuild Peverel’s reputation so people feel confident buying properties in the developments you manage?

A: I recognise there are problems with the reputation, but we are not here to just look at changing the brand.  That isn’t a long term solution.  What we need to do is make sure that the customer service gets better. This is the best way to change people’s perceptions of Peverel.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: News, Peverel Tagged With: ,

Janet Entwistle: ‘There are problems with Peverel’s reputation, but new owners are in it for the long term’

June 20, 2012 by

Janet Entwistle has published a digest of the questions and answers either emailed to her or asked at her public meetings with Peverel’s leaseholders on June 12.

The comments are a frank admission that the company has “problems of reputation” and address fraught issues such as insurance commissions, sub-letting fees and service charges – subjects that have been raised repeatedly on Carlex.

Peverel was bought from administrators three months ago by the private equity firms Chamonix and Electra, and Entwistle was appointed chief executive. She says they are “in it for the long term”.

The Q&As are published on the Peverel website:

http://www.peverel.co.uk/news/questions-from-the-customer-forums/1

A selection are reproduced (unedited) here:

Q: How will you rebuild Peverel’s reputation so people feel confident buying properties in the developments you manage?

A: I recognise there are problems with the reputation, but we are not here to just look at changing the brand.  That isn’t a long term solution.  What we need to do is make sure that the customer service gets better. This is the best way to change people’s perceptions of Peverel.

Q: Where does Estates & Management fit into the Peverel structure?

A: Estates & Management is not part of the Peverel Group. It is a company that acts as an agent for the landlord of some of the properties we manage and is owned by Consensus Business Group, part of the Tchenguiz Family Trust (TFT) and previously we were also owned by TFT. We do manage many of its developments still, but on a commercial basis – just as we manage developments for Berkeley Homes, Barratt Homes and other housebuilders.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Insurance scams, News, Peverel Tagged With: ,

Sub-letting fees should not be more than £40, landlords are told (four times by the Land Tribunal)

June 15, 2012 by

In monetary terms sub-letting fees are one of the more trifling little earners in the leasehold game, but they are deeply resented by flat owners who see that landlords do almost nothing for their money.

Now, it seems, the Land Tribunal agrees with them, ruling in four cases that sub-letting fees should be around £40.

Anyone involved in a dispute with a landlord could offer this sort of sum and be in with a fair chance that that would be the end of it.

Sub-letting fees vary, but charges of £100 – £135 are common, and then there are registration fees of around £75.

Four appeal cases were brought by landlords to the Land Tribunal last February and they were heard together by George Bartlett, QC, president of the Upper Tribunal.

Two appeals were brought by our old friends Peverel, this time trading as Holding and Management (Solitaire) Ltd.

One concerned  a Barratt £123,295 flat in Essex, where the owner was being charged of £105 for this (as well as £75 for the preparation of a deed of covenant and £75 for registration).

The other a £104,500 Barratt flat in Reading, which was being rented out under an assured shorthold tenancy agreement for £750 per month. Solitaire wanted a £135 fee for consent and a notice fee of £75.

Another case, brought by Samnas Ltd, concerned a £122,000 flat in Banbury, Oxfordshire, where the company was after £105 , as well as £75 for registration of the sub-letting.

The last was in Milton Keynes and concerned a £166,000 property where Flambayor Ltd was after £135, and  £75 for the registration.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: News, Peverel, Sub-letting Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Charter Quay: LVT’s devastating criticism of Tchenguiz/Peverel management

June 10, 2012 by

Most critical LVT ruling ever made?

This piece is a report of the staggering Leasehold Valuation Tribunal victory at Charter Quay in November 2011.

It is the most devastating criticism of the Tchenguiz/ Peverel modus operandi to be aired and judged in open court.

The full LVT ruling can be read here:

CHARTER QUAY LVT

The LVT ruling in November 2011 is perhaps the most damning one ever made at an LVT.

November 27 2011: Property tycoon Vincent Tchenguiz and the property management group Peverel have been involved in a second massive defeat at a Leasehold Valuation Tribunal in as many months.

After the humiliation of a record £1 million pay-out to residents at ritzy St George’s Wharf in Vauxhall in September, last week Peverel’s legal team lost another £185,000 to leaseholders at Charter Quay in Kingston, Surrey.

The devastating Leasehold Valuation Tribunal ruling was unusual in the strength of language used to criticise managing agents County Estate Management, a Tchenguiz company of which Peverel took over operational control in summer 2008.

County Estate’s conduct was denounced as “disgraceful” for loading management fees, doling out contracts to other Tchenguiz-owned companies and loading the cost of insurance brokering.

Terms like “glaring failure” and “unacceptable behaviour” appear in the judgment.

The tribunal was astonished that between the Tchenguiz-owned landlord and the Tchenguiz-owned managing agents “there appears to have been no formal written contract appointing them at all”.

The tribunal contemptuously dismissed the obfuscated company ownership structure of the Tchenguiz family trust, with companies ultimately based in the British Virgin Islands. These were termed “quasi Biblical” in their length and complexity.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Charter Quay, Leasehold Valuation Tribunal, Peverel Tagged With: , ,
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