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The Right To Manage Federation chalks up its 28th leasehold RTM success in central London … as it fights epic Plymouth RTM duel in the Land Tribunal

April 17, 2013 by
Riverside Plaza, in Battersea, is 28th RTM success in central London for the Right To Manage Federation

Riverside Plaza, in Battersea, is the 28th right to manage success for leasehold residents in central London by the Right To Manage Federation

LKP has learned that the Right To Manage Federation has achieved its 28th leasehold RTM success in central London on the same day that it fights to free a Plymouth retirement development in the Land Tribunal.

After an inexplicable – and scandalous – hold-up of 14 months, the right to manage at Regent Court finally comes before the  Land Tribunal, where freeholder Israel Moskovitz and business associate and managing agent Joseph Gurvits are determined to fight the issue all the way.

Several of the original leasehold pensioners at Regent Court who petitioned for RTM have since died.

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Filed Under: News, RTM 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.

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

Why does it take 60% of leasehold residents to create a tenants’ association – and only 30% of his constituency to elect Housing Minister Mark Prisk?

February 19, 2013 by

MpriskThe Leasehold Knowledge Partnership is strongly urging Housing Minister Mark Prisk (right) to change the rules to recognise tenants’ associations, as leasehold residents’ associations are formally known in law.

At present they can only be set up when 60 per cent of the residents ask for one to be recognised by their freeholder. This is a very difficult target to achieve, especially in blocks where so many of the leasehold owners are not owner-occupiers. LKP wants the bar to be set at a more reasonable 40 per cent, and makes the point that in the housing minister’s own constituency of Hertford and Stortford he achieved only 30 per cent of the vote.

Mr Prisk would doubtless be indignant if it were suggested that he was not the democratically elected parliamentary representative.

LKP urges all leaseholders to form residents’ associations. The protections of leasehold law only work if you act collectively and forming a tenants’ association is a crucial first step. Needless to say, they are strongly resisted by freeholders and managing agents

It helps prevent those who have a particular grievance fighting it out alone with the freeholder – and his lawyers – and coming seriously unstuck.

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Filed Under: News, RTM Tagged With:

Sorry leasehold right to manage is ‘somewhat daunting’ says junior minister … but I’m not going to do a thing about it

February 9, 2013 by

DonFoster2Junior minister Don Foster (left) has defended his remark that the elderly and the vulnerable find exercising leasehold right to manage as “somewhat daunting”, which some leasehold residents find somewhat insulting.

Foster, who was made a parliamentary under secretary of state for the Department for Communities and Local Government in September 2012, says: “As this is a concern which a range of leaseholders have themselves expressed to me and to my colleagues, I cannot share the view that this is an insulting remark and it was certainly not intended as such.”

Foster’s remarks are made in a letter to fellow LibDem MP David Laws, who is the constituency MP of Carlex activist Brian Reeves.

Many leaseholders are indignant that right to manage, which was introduced by the Labour government in 2002 as an important protection for leaseholders, is being thwarted by freeholders using every legal stratagem possible to frustrate the process.

Often the most belligerent freeholders also own or have an interest in the property management and are busily monetizing the asset with stealth commissions from insurance, energy suppliers, kick-backs from suppliers such as builders … as well as outright loaded service charges.

These abuses have been successfully challenged repeatedly at Leasehold Valuation Tribunals. This is why the leaseholders at St George’s Wharf in Vauxhall, central London, were repaid £1 million. It is why the leaseholders at Charter Quay, Kingston, received £500,000 in four LVT rulings. It is why Strand Court in Rye, a retirement complex, got back £11,500 from Peverel, which received stinging criticism in the ruling last year.

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Filed Under: News, Parliament, RTM Tagged With: ,

Tory MP backs pensioners in leasehold right to manage dispute

February 3, 2013 by

Colvile2Tory MP Oliver Colvile (right) yesterday pledged his support to the two leasehold retirement developments in Plymouth that are locked in leasehold right to manage disputes with their freeholder.

At two packed meetings at Elim Court and Regent Court in his  Sutton and Devonport constituency, Colvile told the residents that he would support them in their litigation and to generate publicity for their cause.

Colvile said he would look into an application to the Bar Council pro bono unit to see whether the right to manage cases – both of which are going to appeal at the Land Tribunal – would merit free high-end legal representation.

He also said he would contact staff at Plymouth University law school to examine the case.

The residents left Colvile in no doubt of their strength of feelings towards their landlord, Avon Freeholds, and managing agent Y and Y Management. Both are London based.

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

Only 4,365 leasehold ‘right to manage’ companies since 2003, claims academic

January 18, 2013 by

A study of leasehold right to manage companies reveals that there have been only 4,365 right to manage companies formed since 2003.

Paul Walentowicz, senior lecturer in housing at the Anglia Ruskin University in Chelmsford, used a freedom of information request to obtain from Companies House the number of companies with ‘right to manage’ or RTM in their title.

“I think it is a pretty accurate indicator because right to manage companies are encouraged to use the term in the name of their new company,” says Walentowicz.

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Filed Under: News, RTM Tagged With:

Pensioners lose leasehold right to manage application for the third time

January 12, 2013 by
Elim Court, in Plymouth has been asking for right to manage since June 2011. Several pensioners who began the action have since died

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

Leasehold pensioners in Plymouth have failed for the third time to break free from London managing agent Joseph Gurvits, LKP was informed yesterday.

Elim Court’s third right to manage application in the past 18 months was thrown out at the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal owing to a mistake in the application.

The decision is a bitterly disappointing set-back for the pensioners, who have been struggling to achieve right to manage since June 2011. Within months of Gurvits’s associate Israel Moskovitz buying the freehold through Avon Freeholds, and Gurvits being appointed the property’s managing agent through Y and Y Management, Elim Court residents have sought to exercise their right to manage themselves.

Gurvits is better known to London leaseholders as the proprietor of the managing agents Eagerstates, which figures in numerous LVT rulings.

To achieve right to manage, the residents engaged the Right to Manage Federation, an RTM facilitator whose fees are paid for in the event of a successful RTM by commissions from the new incoming managing agent.

Justin Bates, landlord barrister

Justin Bates, landlord’s barrister

The case was heard on December 11, and Gurvits employed for the task barrister Justin Bates, who unsuccessfully represented the freeholder against pensioners in the controversial Oakland Court case in Worthing last April. In the House of Commons, Sir Peter Bottomley condemned the legal stratagems involved as “legal torture”.

The Elim Court case illustrates the considerable difficulties pensioners in retirement developments face when trying to exercise their right to manage in the face of a freeholder determined to resist it.

Some of the original members of the RTM company have died, others have gone into care, and some have changed their minds and withdrawn from the application.

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

How to handle your leasehold ‘right to manage’ – by a leading managing agent

September 14, 2012 by

Rob Plumb, CEO of HML Holdings, explains the dangers that lie within the Right to Manage process

Normally a written contract works well to keep an agreement in place because both parties to the contract want the same outcome.  “Right to Manage” isn’t a normal contract. It sounds, initially, so straight forward. RTM enables leaseholders to take over the management of their building without having to prove that their freehold landlord is at fault.  The process can, however, be fraught with complication and danger particularly if one party to it (the landlord) is less than enthusiastic or even uncooperative about it.  There are of course many examples of freeholders who have accepted RTM and have professionally managed the transfer of responsibilities but sadly there are many who have not.

One point worth establishing before you get started is whether or not you need to engage in in the Right to Manage process at all. If your objective is to simply change your managing agent check your lease and find out if it empowers you to change your manager with a simple vote in favour from the leaseholders.  You could avoid a good deal of time and expense if it does.

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Filed Under: Leasehold Valuation Tribunal, RTM Tagged With:

Solicitors squabble in High Court, while leaseholders face a £30,000 right to manage legal bill

July 31, 2012 by

Solicitor Yashmin Mistry

Residents at the Kingsmere estate in Brighton, who have been left facing legal bills of £30,000 following a disastrous right to manage action, are being dragged into a squabble between rival firms of leasehold solicitors.

Last Thursday (July 26) Yashmin Mistry, the leasehold solicitor with JPC Law who acted for them, was the subject of a High Court action in London as her former employers, Brethertons, argued that she had broken her contract of employment when she left the company last year.

But Judge Richard Seymour upheld an application that the restrictive covenant in her contract of employment was too wide to prevent her, at JPC, from acting for clients who may have initially contacted her at Brethertons.

Brethertons has made other applications, but the case was adjourned until October.

Mistry was approached by the leaseholders at the Kingsmere estate when she was still employed at Brethertons, but she took on the case when she joined JPC Law.

As it became apparent that the freeholder, Anstone Properties, was going to contest the right to manage application, she instructed a barrister, which added to the costs, when the case came before the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal in February this year.

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

£30,000 bill for RTM ‘fiasco’

June 13, 2012 by

A group of 120 leaseholders in Brighton have failed in their bid to win “right to manage” and have been left with a legal bill of more than £30,000.

The RTM company set up at Kingsmere, a Seventies building on the London Road in Brighton, has only £800 left in the accounts and faces going into administration.

“We have been completely let down by lawyers and by the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal process,” says John Deacon, chairman of the residents’ association and the RTM company.

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

Chelsea Bridge Wharf: a win for Peverel

March 25, 2012 by

Did residents really vote to be managed by Peverel?

 

Not everyone is happy at Chelsea Bridge
Wharf – just as they weren’t at St George’s
Wharf, Vauxhall, and Charter Quay, Kingston.
All were Peverel managed.

This astonishing item of news emerged from a recent meeting with the Berkeley Group, where it was suggested that residents at Chelsea Bridge Wharf actually voted to be managed by Peverel.

Improbable though it may be, the event did, in fact, occur at Chelsea Bridge Wharf, in Battersea, two months ago. But the circumstances are not quite a ringing endorsement for the troubled managing agent, which was taken out of receivership earlier this week.

Chelsea Bridge Wharf, the largest riverside scheme in central London, which sits beside Battersea Power Station, is in the midst a costly Right To Manage struggle with Vincent Tchenguiz – until last March Peverel’s owner.

Having lost at the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal, Tchenguiz has appealed to the Land Tribunal, which will rule imminently on whether the appeal is permissible.

There are nine separate buildings at Chelsea Bridge Wharf, plus a hotel.  Five of these – Howard, Centurion, Eustace, Oswald and Horace – that make up more than 600 units of the 1050-unit site voted to dump Peverel and opt for RTM.

The 89-unit Burnelli building, where only 15 units are owner-occupied and the rest are shared ownership, had been run by the Genesis Housing Association.

It was a tall order for a social landlord like Genesis to run a block in one of London’s most expensive apartment complexes and the residents weren’t happy. Two months ago they elected to be run by the same managing agents that ran the rest of the site, which is Peverel.

So next month Peverel will be in the happy and unusual position of taking on the management of a new block – rather than losing one.

Chelsea Bridge Wharf illustrates the complex inter-relationship between the Berkeley Group and the troubled Tchenguiz organisation. It sold a ‘superior lease’ on some of the blocks, not actually the freehold, to the Tchenguiz for the best cash offer and by doing so it avoided having to offer the freehold for sale to the leaseholders first, as required in law.

Of the three other buildings on the site, the Warwick Building has a superior lease owned by the L and Q Housing Association, while the freeholds of Lanson and Hawker are retained by Berkeley.

Tony Pidgley

At the base of these buildings Berkeley Group’s legendary owner Tony Pidgley will have his London office suite. For that reason, Berkeley wanted to retain control of this area of Chelsea Bridge Wharf.

Although RTM had been voted on, it was dropped. In these blocks the residents are not unhappy. Berkeley does not fleece residents over the building insurance, for example.

The 142-unit Oswald building, where Tchenguiz has the superior lease, the insurance – through Peverel – costs £79,000 a year. At the 147-unit Lanson building, where Berkeley has retained the freehold, it is only £27,000.

“Berkeley does not scam the residents. In fact, it gets good deals on insurance, possibly better than we could with RTM, so we might even ask them whether we could double up with them,” says a CBW resident, who is backing RTM. Meanwhile, the RTM process has cost way over £20,000 and if Tchenguiz wins right of appeal the whole process will be delayed by more than a year and cost double that.

Filed Under: Chelsea Bridge Wharf, News, Peverel, RTM Tagged With: , , , ,

Background to right to manage

March 13, 2012 by

Right to Manage was a power given to leaseholders in 2002 by the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act. The legislation empowered homeowners to force the transfer of the landlord’s management functions to a special company set up by them – their own “right to manage” or RTM company. The right was introduced not only to wrestle power away from poor landlords but to give the decision of managing the block to the people it affected most, the leaseholders.

Right to Manage is a technical legal process requiring diligence, accuracy and experience. LKP/CarlEX have now advised many developments which have lead to in excess of 100 successful Right to Manage companies being formed, resulting in the removal of failing management companies. A common failing encountered on numerous occasions is the inability of management companies to budget in advance with any real accuracy. In nearly all cases the result is an overspend of the service charge collected, and an immediate recharge to disgruntled leaseholders.

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Filed Under: RTM