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the original members of the RTM company have died, others have gone into care, and some have changed their minds and withdrawn from the application.

[Read more...]