Sir Peter Bottomley condemns criminal behaviour, price-fixing, cheating freeholders, exit fee fiddles, opportunist lawyers and feeble judicial intervention
… in a speech that ALL leaseholders have been waiting to hear
November 14 2013: Sir Peter Bottomley made the speech all leaseholder victims of the system were waiting for when he condemned the current practices in the flawed sector.
Speaking at the annual meeting of the Federation of Private Residents’ Associations – which LKP urges all RAs to join – Sir Peter Bottomley said:
-
Commonhold should be adopted
-
Forfeiture of leases should end (to find out why read the astonishing case of Dennis Jackson who came within a hair’s breadth of losing his £800,000 flat in a closed court from which the public were thrown out).
-
Lawyers and other leasehold professionals who play the system – bludgeoning leaseholders into line with terrifying legal costs – should be named and shamed.
-
End to lawyers delaying right to manage on frivolous grounds, such as not having the letters “RTM” in their title.
-
End to barristers’ favoured wheeze with lay applicants of dumping a massive submission on the day of the hearing.
-
Bring on criminal proceedings against those using leasehold to carry on outright fraud.
-
Publicly expose price-fixing cartels that have cheated pensioners of thousands of pounds, rather than allow the authorities to make cosy confidential deals which means the wrong-doing is not exposed in court and punished.
-
He demanded that the Judicial Conduct Investigation Office publish the report into Benjamin Mire, the chartered surveyor who resigned his judicial appointment following complaints of a conflict of interest.
