He started work in breach of lease, removing the kitchen and bathroom, and a neighbour complained prompting the freeholder to intervene.

The initial demand was for £4,000. When the son went to speak to him he said £2,000 would be sufficient.

The son then offered £500, to which the reply was: “No chance, sonny.”

Gas central heating would involve some works over the common parts.

Here’s the mother’s email to LKP:

The flat needs extensive updating. He wants to replace the old kitchen and bathroom, put central heating in, put in a wooden floor (it is a ground floor flat) and remove a stud partition wall between the kitchen and living room to make it open plan. Everything will remain in the same place – ie: there is no change to layout of cooker, sink, toilet, bath and so on. He asked for consent to alter and the freeholder has said that’s fine but there will be an administration charge of £950, a premium payable for a Deed in the sum of £2,500, and the ground rent will be increased by a further £100 a year. The ground rent will then be doubled every 20 years. Added to this, to give consent for central heating there will be a further admin charge of £450. My son has also agreed to get a letter from a structural engineer saying all is fine (which he is happy to do) and realises he would need to pay an admin charge but these charges seem excessive. He is aged 25 and a first time buyer and these charges are just extortionate.

In a nutshell he is being charged around £4,000 to update the flat – which he can’t afford.

I am just wondering what we can do?

 

The post Wideboy freeholder cuts £4,000 demand for leasehold flat refurb to £2,000 appeared first on Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.

The Leasehold Valuation Tribunal offers freeholders and leaseholders an accessible and speedy approach to dispute resolution. At least, so it is repeated.

Designed for use by laymen, the setting is supposedly more user-friendly and informal than the courts, and legal costs can be kept to a minimum.  That is the theory, but as the Dennis Jackson case demonstrated lawyers have worked around the £500 limit on legal costs when taking leaseholders before the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal.

This is not so easy if you are applying to the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal as the applicant, which is why the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership so often advises leasehold litigants to pay, then fight, rather than defy and lose.

A recent survey carried out by LKP shows that while the majority of leasehold owners choose to represent themselves, freeholders are much more likely to have recourse to legal representation, as they know those legal costs will most likely be paid by the lessees.

In fact, unless the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal is willing to make a s20C order, the leaseholders will end up footing the bill for the freeholder’s legal costs through the service charge, so it is hardly surprising that over 85 per cent of freeholders opt for the services of professional solicitors and barristers from expensive specialist leasehold chambers, regardless of the merits of the case.

The resulting imbalance is exacerbated by the complexity of the legislation and the lack of resources available to leaseholders. The number of applications to Leasehold Valuation Tribunal is rising steadily, and last year alone 25,000 leaseholders contacted the Leasehold Advisory Service for free legal advice. You may find them at www.lease-advice.org. They can provide useful advice, but can also be blandly neutral. LKP is refreshingly unambiguous, and pro-leaseholder.

Leaseholders appearing without legal representation – laymen, who have no legal experience or knowledge – will find it daunting to be pitted against barristers. It is difficult for a wronged leaseholder to muzzle his emotions, and to present a case properly requires objectivity. A clear-headed and dispassionate presentation of the issues is essential, but no mean feat for a flustered leaseholder!

If we then factor in the skill of the freeholder’s barrister in exploiting the more relaxed rules of a tribunal designed to simplify the process for laymen, there is no doubt that leaseholder lay applicants are disadvantaged.

If you are a leaseholder bringing, or defending, a case in person at Leasehold Valuation Tribunal, you may encounter all sorts of sharp practice, or worse, a more subtle form of prejudice.

Forewarned is forearmed, however, so check out the list below:

Pre-Trial Review

At the pre-trial review, the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal tries to clarify the issues, offers a mediation service and sets out instructions for the conduct of the case.

If the parties manage to reach agreement on any of the issues, it’s important to set out clearly the details in writing. Any “gentlemen’s agreement” will not be worth the paper it’s written on, in later stages.

Regulations prescribe that at the PTR, the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal shall:

“endeavour to secure that the parties make all such admissions and agreements as ought reasonably to be made by them in relation to the proceedings; and record in any order made at the pre-trial review any such admission or agreement or any refusal to make such admission or agreement.”

In practice, leaseholders may find the PTR order simply makes no reference to their offers, or a recalcitrant freeholder’s refusal to negotiate. It’s important to have this information on record, for it may be relevant to the question of costs later on.

Communications

All communications between the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal and either freeholder or leaseholder must be copied to the other party. The freeholder’s solicitor may be on friendly terms with the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal clerks and write or call them up without telling you. So, watch your back!

Documents

The freeholder holds most of the documentation on which your case depends, and may make it very difficult for you to get hold of the information you require. Insist on your right to view all the evidence before the hearing. Unlike a formal court, the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal is very relaxed about admitting late evidence, and they won’t penalize a freeholder who produces at the last gasp documents you haven’t had a chance to examine.

You may ask the Tribunal to make sure you have plenty of time to examine all the documents you need, including any witness statements, before the day of the hearing.

Do not hesitate to insist on adjournment in these circumstances: lawyers presenting late evidence is a well used tactic to unsettle leaseholders. See “LVT survival guide pt2″ here

Bundle

The Leasehold Valuation Tribunal normally invites the parties to agree on the documents to be included in the “Bundle”.

Make sure the Freeholder adheres strictly to the agreed timetable for producing his documents. If these are produced too late to allow merging the documents of both parties into one single Bundle, you will be severely disadvantaged at the hearing. Dealing with two sets of page numbers is terribly irksome and time-wasting. The Tribunal will end up referring only to one Bundle, and it won’t be yours!

Keep a list of important page numbers handy for quick and easy reference.  Mark the top of important pages with Post-its, different colours for various topics.

Submissions

Where to start? It can be difficult to do justice to a complex case without getting bogged down in a mass of detail.

However, it helps to start by drawing up a table, with a brief summary of your own and your freeholder’s points on each issue in dispute. In this way, you will be sure that you understand the case yourself, before you start trying to explain it to anyone else! You can also submit this at the hearing for handy reference.  Another good pointer to bear in mind is the following:

Imagine the panel were given your written submissions to read – and absolutely nothing else about the case. Then, having read them, they should

• a) know basically what has happened;
• b) know which issues they will have to decide (both factual and legal);
• c)  know what you have to say about those issues;
• d) be convinced you’re right.

(Gleaned from “The aim of written submissions” on the excellent etclaims.co.uk, by Naomi Cunningham and Michael Reed, concerned with Employment Tribunals, but much of their advice is also useful to leaseholders at Leasehold Valuation Tribunals).

Michael Reed further suggests attaching to your submissions a separate chronology of the facts, which is much clearer and easier to refer to at the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal. It only distracts from the flow of your argument if you’re trying to dig out these details from various submissions.

Always be prepared for the unexpected, however. I was left floundering in a hearing after the freeholder’s barrister succeeded in having my written submissions excluded before the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal had even seen them. Had it not been for the tribunal’s vigilance, he would have kept his own copy of those submissions, which he had heavily annotated over lunch.

A rather questionable trick from a professional barrister!

Rules of evidence

The rules of evidence at Leasehold Valuation Tribunal are less strict than in court, so watch out for incomplete or improbable documents, seen for the first time long after the fact …

Doctored emails are a great favourite, being simple, quick and cheap to turn out.

Such evidence ought to be inadmissible. If you know it’s a fake, though you may not be able to prove it, as you don’t have access to the originals, you may still make a strong case for it to be excluded.

Hearsay

Anyone unfamiliar with the English/Welsh tribunals system may be surprised to learn that hearsay is admissible. This is something you need to be aware of and prepared for.

As this is a legal matter, it’s well beyond the scope of this article. However, further resources are widely available online, including the following

http://leadingcounsel.co.uk/articles/2008/07/04/hearsay1/

Iolanthe, sadly, won’t help you….

Lord Chancellor: No. It’s a nice point. I don’t know that I ever met it before. But my difficulty is that at present there’s no evidence before the Court that chorused Nature has interested herself in the matter.

Strephon, an Arcadian shepherd: No evidence! You have my word for it. I tell you that she bade me take my love.

Lord Ch. Ah! But, my good sir, you mustn’t tell us what she told you – it’s not evidence. Now an affidavit from a thunderstorm, or a few words on oath from a heavy shower, would meet with all the attention they deserve.

Streph. And have you the heart to apply the prosaic rules of evidence to a case which bubbles over with poetical emotion?

Lord Ch. Distinctly. I have always kept my duty strictly before my eyes, and it is to that fact that I owe my advancement to my present distinguished position.

Witnesses

This merits careful preparation. You may call witnesses and cross-examine the freeholder’s witnesses.

I was given ten minutes at the end of the first day hearing to cross-examine two witnesses. This was insufficient, and I had not understood that the witnesses could also be called to the following hearing.

You will need to dissect their statements with extreme care to point up any lies lurking within, and prepare unexpected questions. It is also disconcerting in a room that is almost empty, to find yourself seated directly next to a witness you are cross-examining.

Apart from the fact that such proximity may feel really uncomfortable, even threatening, when dealing with a person with whom you’ve had a long running dispute, it is far better to be in a position to read the witness’s facial expression and body language. If they won’t change places, you may!

A tip from the freeholder’s barrister here: he consistently sat in the row in front of the witness, but one or two places further along the row. Close, but not too close, this diagonal position allowed him to turn back towards his victim, thus concealing his expression from the tribunal without risking torticollis.

Resources

If you going to present your case at Leasehold Valuation Tribunal, the first thing you need is some basic knowledge of the relevant legislation.

The RICS Service Charge Residential Management Code is a good starting point, and presumably that is the reason so few freeholders and managing agents seem to have read it!

There are many useful summaries of leaseholders’ rights to be found free of charge online. My favourites are

www.legislation.gov.uk straight from the horse’s mouth

www.lease-advice.org good general info, government funded

www.lawandlease.co.uk barrister Amanda Gourlay’s unsurpassed clear, intelligent, lively analysis of cases

www.newsontheblock.com/lvt/  a pity Justin Bates’ uneven but interesting coverage of Leasehold Valuation Tribunal cases comes at a price!

Should you require some grasp of the finer points, however, it’s well worth investing in one of the many excellent publications available (but unfortunately, usually very expensive!) from specialist bookshops, or online from Wildy & Sons. www.wildy.com

Personal favourites are Service Charges and Management Law and Practice from Tanfield Chambers, which comes with a handy CD-rom. This is a great investment if you have several different problems.

Also clear and concise is Service Charges, Law and Practice by Philip Freedman, Eric Shapiro and Brian Slater.

Self-representation can be daunting and horribly time consuming, but there’s no need to panic – a good deal of help is at hand if you just know where to find it!

Obviously I cannot help with legal matters, but please feel free to contact me for practical help or moral support. gill@termcontrol.co.uk

Gill Nieuwland is a leaseholder in Kensington, London. Her website on leasehold issues is: www.termcontrol.co.uk. She has been involved in the following cases:

LON/00AW/LDC/2006/0050
LON/00AW/LSC/2008/0001
LON/00AW/LDC/2008/0043
LON/00AW/LDC/2009/0041
LON/00AW/LDC/2011/0038
LON/00AW/LDC/2012/0097
LON/00AW/LSC/2013/0252

The post An LVT survival guide for lay applicants appeared first on Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.

Readers are warmly urged to comment on the ‘LVT survival guides’ articles and include their own advice and tips

By Martin Boyd

1) If the freeholder produces a large bundle of documents just before, or in the week before, a hearing, you must tell the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal that you do NOT accept them.

It is frequent practice for the freeholder’s legal team to dump documents on lay applicants on the day. You cannot assimilate 50 pages in a 15-minute adjournment, although there may be gentle pressure from the tribunal to accept this.

Explain clearly that you are not in a position to consider the documents, as you have concentrate on presenting your main case based on the evidence provided as per the directions.

Argue that the new documents should either be excluded from the hearing, or that an adjournment be granted and the hearing rescheduled for another date.

Once you have accepted documents, the fact that they are late has no relevance. The Leasehold Valuation Tribunal will consider them as part of the case.

It is entitled, however, to accept a few late documents so do not try and reject just a couple of pages that may arise as evidence during the hearing from both sides.

The Leasehold Valuation Tribunal has regulations regarding these submissions and you should check them beforehand: regulation 15 and 16 of the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal (procedure) Regs 2003. But in July this will be replaced by the new Property Chamber regulations.

2) Write a skeleton argument in the weeks before the hearing setting out the law, the issues, and the page references within the bundle of the main issues you are arguing. This should include any case references, and the skeleton itself should be no more than seven or so pages long (depending on the size of the case). The skeleton argument will also act as your prompter during the case.

 3) Agree when skeleton arguments should be exchanged with the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal and the other side. The freeholder will often present his skeleton arguments at the last minute.

You are in a much better position if the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal agrees that they should be exchanged the day before the hearing. They will learn little from your skeleton, but you may learn a lot from theirs.

4) Listen to the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal chairman during the hearing.

This sounds easy, but this is a very difficult thing to do when you are desperately trying to present a case and find pages spread around the bundle.

However, getting this right is a great help. It may be best to have one of your team listening out for hints and clues. The chairman will indicate when he has heard enough about a point, when he needs more evidence and, most satisfyingly, when he is doubting the freeholder’s statements.

If the chairman has heard enough and you don’t listen to these messages, he may get cross and you risk arguing yourself out of a point that you have already won! Also have someone take notes for your team. Possibly, several people.

5) Do not be tempted into an argument with the other side’s advocate.

 They will often try to bait you and belittle your arguments. Stick to your guns, argue the points strongly and only fight back at the end of the case going back to a couple of silly statements made by the other side.

6) Avoid arguing about the law!

 The freeholder’s advocate will try to make the case as much about the law as possible – it’s their home territory. So, stick to the basics: keep to the facts of the case.

If necessary, point out to the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal that you are reliant on it – the experts – to set out its view of the law if it conflicts with anything your saying.

The Tribunal is not allowed to advise you, but it can set out its opinion on an aspect of the case. It will be for you to decide if what you are being told means that there is something wrong in your argument.

7) If at all possible, make sure you are allowed to summarise your case. Often one of the last issues in a s27 case is the management fees, which is an argument about a whole range of factual issues that have impacted the site. This is your home territory, and no matter how well briefed the freeholder’s lawyer is he will struggle to keep up with the facts.

If the chairman, or the other side’s advocate, says something you think may have a legal meaning but which do not understand, insist on an explanation in layman’s terms.

If you need to take advice, ask for an adjournment.

If you think the chairman is speaking to the freeholder’s lawyer in legal code, it is probably dealing quickly with a point of law to save time, but you should still ask for an explanation if relevant.

9) Present your case as clearly as possible using the factual evidence that you have.

 Do not speculate. Even something accepted as fact by both sides may need to be proved as fact again.

If you claim a freeholder has or has not done carried out a service that is disputed, you can only do so if you have a set of evidence showing you have complained about the issue.

 10) Avoid criticising the freeholder’s staff.

The freeholder’s advocate may attempt a character assassination on your witnesses. This more often than detracts  from their case, and it can seriously backfire if you try the same technique. You can end up being seen as the intransigent bully, rather than the victim.

If the freeholder has to stoop to character assassination of your witnesses, it is also an indication of just how weak his argument is and the Tribunal has seen this time and again.

Martin Boyd is a leaseholder at Charter Quay in Kingston, Surrey, where residents have won back more than £500,000 from the Tchenguiz’s County Estates Management

The post An LVT survival guide pt2 appeared first on Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.

Des Clark, a self-employed builder in Rochester, Kent, thought building a couple of freehold retirement bungalows on a site with access through an existing retirement development would be a sound business move back in 2008.

But it has proved to be a one-way slide into the red as Clark saw his retirement properties plummet in value, and then got caught up in the fallout after the Peverel property interests fragmented in March 2011.

Clark sold one bungalow just before the collapse for £190,000 in January 2011 – original price £229,000 – at the Flack Gardens in Hoo St Werburgh. But he cannot sell the second (above) without paying £20,000 to Estates and Management, part of the Tchenguiz Family Trust, for the access ransom strip. That’s after “a gesture of goodwill”. The first demand was £30,000.

Clark, 56, bought the site in 2008, and claims that both Keith Edgar, former head of Peverel Retirement, and David Edwards, former head of legal, agreed a price of £2,500 each for a 99-year lease to access the bungalows.

Clark objected to a suggested £100 a year service charge cost for this, as buyers would be contributing £1,600 a year in service charges at the site, the deal being that bungalows became part of the rest of the development. He also suggested the lease be for 125 years.

A draft agreement was prepared by David Edwards, company secretary and director of freehold owner Retirement Care BH Limited. But it was agreed that the leases would not be signed until the bungalows were sold.

The first was sold in January 2011 just before the Peverel meltdown and Clark paid the agreed £2,500 for the access lease.

The second bungalow continued to fall in value – as have all retirement properties – but this year a 79-year-old would-be buyer has come forward offering £165,000.

With the collapse of Peverel, Retirement Care BH Limited ended up in the hands of Estates and Management, part of the Tchenguiz Family Trust.

Both Edgar and Edwards have ceased to be directors and both have also left Peverel – Edwards making his way to the Anchor Trust.

Instead of paying £2,500 for the access strip, Estates and Management demanded £30,000.

It does not deny an agreement existed, but says it was never formally authorised and five years have lapsed since it was made. Following protests by Clark, E and M has revised the bill to £20,000, plus reasonable legal costs.

Very decently, it appears that David Edwards is giving the builder his full backing, confirming that their agreement existed. Whether this is sufficient is the point of law under discussion.

“I am only a small-scale, self-employed builder but I have never had problems like this before,” says Clark. “I never want to go near retirement leasehold ever again.”

The matter is being negotiated between his legal team and E & M.

The post Small-scale builder left high and dry after Tchenguiz / Peverel meltdown appeared first on Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.

The next few weeks will see whether Karen Peel (above), 54, a businesswoman, succeeds in her efforts on behalf of residents at The Pinnacle, in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, to enfranchise the site of 137 flats in the city centre.

If she does so it will be a tremendous vindication of 18 months of effort – not least because barely five per cent of The Pinnacle is owner-occupied.

Karen’s painful research project into the miseries of leasehold began in October 2007 after she bought a £144,000 flat for her son Lewis, now aged 30, who had started work in computer design in Leeds.

The freehold of The Pinnacle had been hoovered up by the Newcastle-based Adderstone Group in the form of UK Ground Rent Estates Limited.

Adderstone then decided, after careful reflection, to appoint itself as managing agent.

Karen became involved when she queried why she had not been served an invoice for the £250 ground rent, as well as a £700 service charge demand.

The Pinnacle in Wakefield, where 95 per cent of the leaseholders are investors

After repeated inquiries, it emerged that the demands had been sent to Lewis’s previous address, rather than to his flat at The Pinnacle.

“Although the mistake was theirs they sent us a bill for £700 in legal costs, which I refused to pay,” says Karen. “I should have challenged this in the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal, but I did not know anything about leasehold at that stage.”

To her annoyance, Lewis’s mortgage company hastily paid the sum after a threat of forfeiture while she was on holiday, so the matter never came to court.

It then emerged that other residents fell into default after Adderstone moved the management on to another property management company in the group, Avoca. This had a different bank account, and several overseas owners paying by direct debit fell behind with service charge payments and incurred costs. There is no suggestion that the residents were misled.

“When I heard of similar issues with other residents, I was determined to do something about this,” says Karen.

She spent six months tracking down all the leasehold owners at The Pinnacle, who lived in Canada, Abu Dhabi, New Zealand and China.

“I paid for the information from the Land Registry and then tracked people down through social media,” she recalls. “In the end, I got in touch with all but about four.”

Karen was determined to exercise right to manage “to protect my son’s property if nothing else”.

Property values in the Leeds area were in free fall after 2008 and repossessions at The Pinnacle for similar flats to Lewis’s were selling for £65,000.

Helped by a local managing agent, Andrew Edgerton, of RBM, Karen served her right to manage application with 90 per cent support from the leaseholders in August last year. It was not contested and the residents took over control on December 1 2012.

Having persuaded the other owners to opt for right to manage – Karen has only personally met five of them – she has now raised 70 per cent support from qualifying members for enfranchisement.

“So many of these property management companies and those who bought the freehold always gambled on leaseholders being too disorganised to fight back, especially on sites dominated those who had bought flats as investments,” Karen says. “But we have proved them wrong.”

Those wanting to enfranchise have paid up £225 into an account controlled by RBM, which now manages the site. Karen reckons that the ownership of the freehold will pay for itself in eight years.

“After enfranchisement, it will be a property where the residents are totally in control,” says Karen.

The beneficial effects of right to manage are already apparent and property prices at the site have increased, with Lewis’s flat now worth around £120,000.

Attempts were made to contact the Adderstone Group in connection with this article, but its telephone numbers and website details are not functioning at present. We are happy to include a statement.

The post The woman who tracked down 133 leasehold neighbours, organised an RTM and is now buying the freehold appeared first on Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.

The elevation comes 13 years after he was first elected a councillor. A LibDem and leasehold activist, Bob has assured LKP that he has no ambitions to unseat Sir Peter Bottomley, Tory MP for Worthing West. This will come as a great relief to leaseholders, who have much cause to be very grateful to Sir Peter, who has intervened in numerous cases of  leasehold injustice even though they are not in his constituency.

Last year, Bob chaired a meeting of leaseholders addressed by LKP and John Fenwick, 65, the leaseholder who won the “legal torture” case at Oakland Court: gaining £65,500 over wrongly paid charges for the notional rent of the house manager’s flat.

Bob continues as chairman of FoPRA, although will be taking a back seat.

We wish the mayor well, and here are the charities he is campaigning for:

http://www.worthingmayorscharities.co.uk/

The post Many congratulations today to Mayor Bob! appeared first on Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.

Already the new ARMA-Q regulator Keith Hill (above), a former New Labour housing minister, has six cases of complaint to deal with “which I am going to get started on right away”.

Baroness Hanham, Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government, gave a cordial endorsement, saying that self-regulation was the government’s favoured solution to leasehold.

Leasehold tenure is going to increase and she was aware that, owing to different demographics and culture, there could be one or two problems with it (which is an odd way of seeing £1 million law cases, or pensioners facing a £30,000 legal bill because their “right to manage” has been thwarted).

She sang her boss’s praises for his amendment to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill that means managing agents will have to be members of an Ombudsman scheme.

This irrelevance was dreamed up to dump a crafty clause introduced by Baroness Gardner in the Lords, which would have paved the way to state regulation of managing agents – which has the unanimous support from all sides in the sector.

That is not to say that Mark Prisk, the housing minister, is deaf to leasehold issues – unlike his hapless predecessor – and another round-table of leaseholder insiders (with LKP in the naughty corner as an “observer”) will take place.

While it is difficult to be too enthusiastic about a trade body with such grisly members – who give repeated demonstrations of their priorities in one LVT case after another – ARMA-Q is a very good thing and must be welcomed.

The more thoughtful ARMA members know that it is long overdue, and the wily ARMA secretariat have half an eye on ARMA-Q being the statutory regulatory scheme in leasehold management (helped along by the two leasehold civil servants at the DCLG, who were present at the celebrations yesterday).

The appointment of Keith Hill as the regulator is also a very good choice.

Unfortunately, he overdid matters in his address saying “ARMA represents only half the country’s managing agents and these are the good guys.”

ARMA certainly does have a lot of “good guys”. But it also has some real stinkers and they have been calling the shots in this organization until very recently.

The problems with leasehold, as we repeatedly point out in our lobbying, are not confined to one or two Rachmans: it is large-scale, corporate cheating surrounding inter-company deals, loaded charges, insurance commissions and, as often as not, joint ownership of managing agent and freeholder – which is a bar to membership of LKP.

Many very good managing agents abhor ARMA and won’t have anything to do with it; some have resigned from the organisation. For years it colluded in covering up the abuses of leasehold while intoning hypocritical drivel about “transparency” and fairness towards stakeholders.

There is also the point that many managing agents are members RICS, or as “associates” are members of RICS lite, and have no need to join ARMA at all.

Hill certainly demonstrates a commendable zeal for his new role, which will involve 2-3 days a month. Although details are sketchy, his decisions will be made public: he says immediately after the case. Although there will also be an annual report.

For leaseholders, ARMA-Q is a useful additional source of redress, if it can be demonstrated that an ARMA member has failed to comply with the organisation’s ethical standards.

Many might be tempted to look to the regulator for low-cost, simplified justice, without the procedural complications and risk of costs involved in an LVT.

That would be to misunderstand ARMA-Q: it is there to sort ARMA’s problems, not those of leaseholders. It will not be Keith Hill ruling on whether you are paying too much in the service charges.

ARMA-Q gets a pat on the back from government and is going to be trumpeted by the vested interests in leasehold.

Leaseholders with serious disputes will know, from even a cursory read of this website, that there is no alternative to meticulously prepared litigation in the LVTs.

The post ARMA-Q solves ARMA’s problems, not those of leasehold appeared first on Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.

In February 2012 they bought Peverel, which had been part of the Tchenguiz empire from 2007 until it went into administration in March 2011. The deal involved a £62 million transaction supported with further working capital via a NatWest Bank loan.

In recent months, Peverel has appointed a £90,000 a year press guru, although a lot of the company’s efforts concern staying out of the public eye.

Recent LVT cases have been kicked into the long grass by arriving at settlements, where the parties sign confidentiality agreements. A recent example concerned Kingsborough commissions at a retirement site near Kingston, in Surrey.

Janet Entwistle, the CEO, has made it clear that LVT cases must be headed off, and she is a strong supporter of confidential Ombudsman schemes.

Then there is the fact that key figures of the past have been shown the door, such as Lee Middleburgh, the former head of residential, and Keith Edgar, the ex-head of Peverel Retirement. Former head of legal David Edwards has joined the Anchor Trust.

Most intriguing is Peverel’s relationship with the only  customer who really counts: the Tchenguiz Family Trust. It owns the bulk of the freeholds that Peverel manages (including those of 53,000 retirement flats).

These freeholds have been up for sale for a year or so, and is an open question what Peverel’s relationship would be with a new owner.

It is odd that at a number of important sites – Palgrave Gardens, near Regent’s Park, and the massive 422-unti Metro Central Heights Metro Central Heights at the Elephant and Castle – Peverel has not resisted right to manage. Instead, it has co-operated with the process in exchange for a one-year management contract.

Why?

The Right To Manage Federation, which handled the RTM at Metro Central Heights, has contacted LKP to point out that it was actually the RTM Company that chose to continue with Peverel on an interim basis. It did not think the acquisition date gave sufficient time to select a new agent.

Of course, ownership of Peverel has been a game of pass-the-parcel from the early days. It was originally a Bournemouth estate agent that got lucky tying up with John McCarthy, the founder of retirement leasehold pioneer McCarthy and Stone.

At some point in the eighties it was absorbed into the housebuilder only to be sold again in 1993 after the first retirement leasehold mutiny. This is when John McCarthy sued the Daily Telegraph for £800,000, but abandoned the case after blowing £200,000 on lawyers.

Peverel was then sold off to Electra in 1993 for £30 million.

John McCathy recalls in his autobiography Building a Billion:

“Interesting, in the formative days of us moving into the provision of sheltered housing in the private sector, a number of institutions including Housing Associations were not interested in taking on the management. They seem to have missed out.”

A management buyout followed and in 2007 Peverel ended up in the hands of Tchenguiz.

It has now lost the management of the pick of its prime London sites, and none of the prestige housebuilders will touch it. Nor will McCarthy and Stone, curiously, which is now attempting to manage its properties – the very few it has built since 2008 – itself.

The post Is Peverel gearing up for another sale? appeared first on Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.

In fact, ARMA-Q was unveiled at the organisation’s annual conference last September, and that signified less bright “new dawn” than “same old racket”.

One of the sponsors was Energy Renewals. It offered attendees the chance to win a free iPad if they sign up for an appointment: that is, to provide a sales lead to sign over their apartment blocks for new gas and electricity supplies.

If they did so, there would be further er … what are politely called “incentive payments” of between £3,000 and £50,000 a year.

Large, corporate clients – such as the larger, national managing agents – could do better still with payments of £50,000 to £250,000.

And – as with insurance policies – the brilliant thing is that the leaseholders don’t have to be told anything about these payments and can be relied upon to keep paying up in blissful ignorance!

And this was at an ARMA annual conference entitled “Success in a Consumer Focused Future”!

Our original report on this can be read here

An anonymous ARMA member wrote to LKP: “How can ‘ARMA members lead the market through better regulation and how leaseholders will benefit from a revised set of professional standards’, if ARMA members go with the ‘bungs ‘r’ us’ boys?

“It smacks of hypocrisy and sends mixed messages to everyone attending the conference, or associated with ARMA. It shines a bad light on those of us who backed ARMA from day one, sound in the belief that not only would they ‘provide absolute assurance that choosing an ARMA member will mean reliable, professional and cutting edge service’, but that they would also bring our profession into the 21^st century and establish a credible organisation that symbolises transparency and best business practice.”

It is worth recalling that ARMA has never, in its 21-year history, publicly expelled a single member.

The post Stuff a leaseholder and win an iPad! The unpromising debut of ARMA-Q appeared first on Leasehold Knowledge Partnership.

Lemmings unaccountably like to hurl themselves off the cliff-face into the abyss … and so, it seems, do Chelsea leasehold owners who cannot agree among themselves.

Years of wrangling mean that a rundown four-flat converted Victorian house just off the King’s Road is now being managed by a court-appointed managing agent. He has additional powers as the court-appointed receiver.

This is a mirror image opposite of the right to manage: the four leaseholders, three of whom are also the freeholders, cannot manage their own affairs so someone else is having to do so for them.

When neighbours cannot demonstrate a minimum ability to co-operate the result is years of argument, a neglected building, multiple LVT cases and … thousands of pounds wasted. In short, a disaster for all involved.

Each of the four leaseholders had until 5pm yesterday (Friday May 10) to pay £13,750 each for long overdue refurbishment works. They were also ordered to pay £2,500 each to pay the costs of a failed legal action by their managing agent, who had sued their ex-managing agent for release of service charge funds.

This sorry state of affairs is the result of years of intractable disputes over the buildings upkeep, which resulted in managing agent Andrew Strong, of Atlantis Estates, being made not only the property’s court-appointed managing agent in February 2011 but also its court-appointed receiver as well.

Issues came to a head with an LVT ruling last month – the third in this case – where it was noted, ominously, that the receiver “stands in the shoes of the landlord and has the function to gather in assets of the landlord over whom he has been appointed”.

The order to pay up £16,250 today has come as a bitter blow to filmmaker Renuka Wickramaratne, who has owned her flat for 20 years, and who is one of the three residents with an equal share of the freehold.

She is adamant that she has not been unreasonable in her dealings with her neighbours, but is appalled at the heavy hand of leasehold law that has made her powerless in the management of a building that she partly owns. An additional source of pain was a £2,565 overdue service charge demand, which the tribunal also ordered her to pay by last Friday.

The case of Peterborough Villas is unusual in that it demonstrates that even high up the social ladder – a flat here changed hands for £670,000 in 2007 – owners can be completely dysfunctional.

The building has been neglected for years owing to arguments over paying for the repairs.

For a moment in 2008, there appeared to be some agreement when David Price of managing agents James E Fisher and Sons was appointed managing agent. But Ms Wickramaratne concedes it was an error on her part that only her signature was on the contract of engagement.

After more rowing, two of the four leaseholders preferred Andrew Strong, of Atlantis Estates, and the matter was heard by an LVT in early 2011.

The resulting case reads like a beauty contest between two managing agents. Mr Price conceded that he did not have the support of two residents “and he appeared a little ambivalent as to whether he really wanted to be formally appointed”.

Renuka Wickramaratne outside her home in Chelsea, which needs refurbishment

The tribunal favoured Mr Strong as he “came across as credible and professional” and “it seems to the Tribunal that a fresh approach is needed from someone untainted by past failings”.

The tribunal found in favour of those freeholders who wanted to engage Mr Strong, acknowledging that his management services were more expensive.

In July 2012 the residents at Peterborough Villas were back in the LVT where Ms Wickramaratne sought to remove Mr Strong as managing agent. She again argued in favour of James E Fisher and Sons, and was supported by Marcus Shields, the only leaseholder in the block who does not own a part of the freehold.

The two other freeholder/leaseholders wanted to retain Mr Strong.

It was a case heard by Professor James Driscoll, one of the country’s leading authorities on leasehold law.

His frustration in dealing with bickering lay applicants comes across in his ruling, especially as Ms Wickramaratne and Mr Shields sent “various communications” to the tribunal’s case officer after the hearing ended.

“We did not consider it appropriate for us to take account of unsolicited submissions made several weeks after the hearing,” said the professor.

He did not disguise his astonishment:

“It emerged at the hearing that Ms Wickramaratne and Mr Shields support Mr Fisher’s decision not to pass on the service charge funds [to Mr Strong].  We have also noted that they are not currently paying anything towards service charges.

“No disrespect is intended to Ms Wickramaratne, but she appears to have confused her role as one of the freeholders with the fact that she is also a leaseholder of one of the flats in the building.

“As one of the freeholders we fail to understand why she (amongst other things) opposes the passing on of service charges to the appointed manager and receiver.  And we repeat the point that as a freeholder she must share the blame with the other freeholders for what has gone wrong in the past.

“One of the reasons the tribunal decided to appoint Mr Strong rather than Mr Fisher is that he could act impartially as he had not been in any way connected with the unfortunate history of these disputes.”

The dispute subsequently took a near farcical turn when Mr Strong sued Mr Fisher in Reading County Court to obtain approximately £10,000 in service charges (both employing barristers) – and he lost the case!

The result is that the same amount was spent on legal costs as was in the service charge account and this sum has now been added to the service charges.

By the time of the third and final LVT last month, the courts had clearly lost patience with Peterborough Villas.

 “Given the history of the application before us and to the appointment of Mr Strong we have no confidence that the freeholders are yet capable of proper and effective management of the premises,” it noted.

Mr Strong applied to the tribunal on April 15 for £2,565 unpaid service charges from Ms Wickramaratne, (Mr Shields’ mortgage company having paid up following a forfeiture threat), plus £13,750 from each leaseholder for the long delayed urgent repair works.

In addition, the LVT has ordered the residents to pay the £10,000 legal costs spent on Mr Strong’s failed Reading County Court case.

The LVT could not have been clearer that it expected this money to be paid:

The three freeholders were also ordered to procure all accounts and records relating to Peterborough Villas from Mr David Price of James E Fisher & Son and hand them over to Mr Strong.

It is unknown at this stage whether all the residents have handed over the money. If not, the saga of Peterborough Villas will continue in the courts.

For the residents, this has been an expensive performance to stage.

The full LVTs can be read here:

1) March 2011 – LVT appoints Andrew Strong, of Atlantis Estates, as managing agent, not David Price of James E Fisher & Son

http://www.residential-property.judiciary.gov.uk/Files/2011/March/001069R5.pdf

2) July 2012 – Failure to oust Andrew Strong 

http://www.residential-property.judiciary.gov.uk/Files/2012/July/LON_00AN_LVM_2012_1_17_Jul_2012_09_34_21.htm

3) April 2013 - Residents told to pay up or face the consequences PeterboroughVillas3

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