The Leasehold Advisory Service has dismayed key leasehold groups by handing over an important survey of leaseholders to Brady Solicitors, in Nottingham.
The survey aims to gauge leaseholder satisfaction, with a particular emphasis at blocks of flats run by resident management companies and RTMs.
In other words, data concerning the most empowered leaseholder-controlled sites in the country would be given to solicitors who habitually work for freeholders.
LKP’s advice is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.
It astonishing that this survey has been farmed out by the taxpayer-funded quango, which is publicly funded solely because the leasehold sector is notorious for its monetising enthusiasms. Those who take part are asked to provide name, address, phone number, age range and contact email.
Brady Solicitors specialises in pursuing debt and advising freeholders on maximising ground rent incomes.
It has also been pretty hard-nosed working for clients such as Benjamin Mire, which involved a breach of confidentiality threat against an elderly leaseholder.
The survey does say the information will be anonymised, and that details will be kept confidential and not passed to a third party.
But it adds: “Brady Solicitors may call you to discuss your feedback and identify any areas in which you may like to investigate obtaining help or support.”
The purported aim of the survey is “to produce a report reflecting satisfaction levels and challenges faced by RMC directors and leaseholders”.
This, too, is alarming. Why has LEASE decided that this is an area of priority? The chairman of LEASE has emphasised that a considerable number of inquiries – even most, on the day he manned the phones – concern RTMs and RMCs.
This is absolutely not our experience at LKP.
We do know of RMCs and RTMs where there have been failings and fallouts.
We have reported the case of the London RMC director Brian Copsey, an accountant, who stole £1 million from his neighbours’ funds
But these complaints are dwarfed by the habitual leasehold gameplayers seeking to monetise their freeholds in ever more imaginative and often dubious ways.
LKP, the Home Owners’ Alliance, AgeUK and the FPRA are now in discussions about producing an alternative, independent survey.
We encourage readers not to complete the survey.
The LEASE press release on the survey is below:
The UK’s first ever independent national survey of the country’s 4.1 million leaseholders, a ground-breaking survey developed by LEASE, is launched today, 11 January 2016.
The survey has been developed in conjunction with property law firm Brady Solicitors, with the aim of assessing levels of satisfaction amongst the UK’s leaseholders and residents management company (RMC) directors. It is live online at www.bradysolicitors.com/survey2016 for leaseholders to contribute until the 31 March.
Leasehold properties are being built at a rate of close to 120,000 per year but currently there is no definitive understanding of what is desired – both in terms of the build of the property and the management services that are subsequently provided.
LEASE urges all leaseholders, and RMC directors to have their say by taking part in this unique and important piece of research into the leasehold sector in England and Wales.
The research will provide valuable information for government ministers, and the industry’s regulatory bodies, and, importantly, will help the sector’s service providers, the managing agents, to understand how and where they need to improve, whilst assisting leaseholders to better understand their rights and responsibilities towards both their property and their fellow leaseholders.
Brady Solicitors has a UK-wide client base of property management companies, commercial landlords, surveyors, property developers and residents’ associations. Its MD Clare Brady says:
“Working alongside LEASE, we hope that through this research, we can help leaseholders and the companies that manage their properties, to work better together and ensure the leasehold sector can be a successful source of new homes for the UK’s growing population.”
Related posts:
LKP analysis of the LEASE/Brady solicitors leaseholder survey 2016
57% of leaseholders regret buying their property, says LEASE
Guardian reports leasehold is the biggest problem for ‘homeowners’
Roger Southam should not be LEASE chair, leaseholder tells housing minister
Leaseholder activists rejected for positions on LEASE board
Realities of leasehold spelled out during the Housing Bill
What a grotesque conflict of interest. Roger Southam you should be ashamed and should either withdraw this or resign.
Would I trust this outfit with confidential information?
Not a chance.
Today I received a letter from a managing agent touting for business which had information that has never been shared with them (indeed I’d never heard of them). Some but not all of it could probably have been obtained from public sources, but some details were wrong suggesting that they had been passed the information somehow. A nice little commission for someone perhaps? All too likely if what I’ve seen of this business is anything to go by. Corrupt and conflict-ridden, backhanders left and right, top to bottom.
The letter of introduction says they also work for landlords.
I recommend that anyone else receiving such correspondence read this:
https://www.leaseholdknowledge.com/new-partnership-jfm-management-joins-lkp
and think carefully. This is not a recommendation for the firm. I do not know the individuals concerned, but I admire their principles. When the time comes, if it’s possible to do so, our development will exclude from consideration any who do not subscribe them..
The news on this site keeps getting worse. Leasehold is shown, week after week, day after day, to be rotten through and through; I suspect far beyond anything ever imagined when this site was set up. One can only applaud LKP as a beacon of light in a very dark sea indeed.
I wonder what the leasehold equivalent should be of the American congressman Alan Grayson’s advice to his constituents was in respect of healthcare insurance. It was
1. Don’t get sick
2. If you do get sick, die quickly
So
1. Don’t buy leasehold
2. If you do buy leasehold, … expect conflict of interest, theft and legalised extortion at every turn
LEASE’s actions are squalid. Sorry Mr Southam, that is exactly what they are AND YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER.
Anyone who has had any contact with LEASE will know that all this body does is to offer the “advice” that it cannot be of any practical assistance to any leaseholder on any leasehold issue. All LEASE does is to point individuals in the direction of the Land Registry, the 1st Tier Tribunal, and provide “hand-out” information that is readily and freely available..elsewhere.
LEASE has repeatedly shown that it lacks all clout in relation to leaseholder issues and serves little if any purpose for leaseholders.
Having experienced this at first hand, and more than once, in face to face meetings and telephone calls, I sought other advice and was recommenced to Brady Solicitors, Nottingham. Before contacting these people, I asked an acquaintance in Nottingham (who was similarly immersed in leaseholder issues) what he knew of them. His response was blunt: “We used them once.” -never again.
And this is the problem in this unregulated field. LEASE, ARMA et al, are all unfit for the purpose of protecting leaseholders from the unscrupulous Rachmanist criminals who have invaded this sector; and from the latter’s unprincipled legal advisers…
I watched the Housing & Planning Bill debate on the BBC Parliament channel and was impressed by the intervention of Sir Peter Bottomley and Jim Fitzpatrick. It was a step forward and I will comment on this shortly in the under column.
Not many are aware that if for example you use the Peverel/Firstport website to make payments you automatically (unless you opt out) give consent for your information to be stored and passed on to third parties.. The information is stored by a source outside of the EU, and therefore not subject to EU law on data protection.
That is horrific!
Having faced Brady solicitors throughout my various cases with Benjamin Mire, I am aware of how aggressive this firm can be towards leaseholders.
It seems totally ridiculous that LEASE should think it appropriate that leaseholders should participate in this survey and provide information to Brady solicitors. If the Chairman of LEASE supports this project he should perhaps think about his position.
This survey will not help leaseholders. I welcome the idea that those groups who do help leaseholders have agreed to work together on a joint survey.
As I have said many times before, the people who top these organisations just move around from one to another.
It’s just one big merry go round between ARMA, ARHM, LEASE, M&S, Peverel, First Port, Freemont, AgeUK, Baronesses, Girlings, Millstream, etc, etc.
They cannot fully support Leaseholders as none of them want to rock the Leasehold boat.
If they really meant business they would join or support Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation or LKP.
LEASE have “got into bed” with a firm of aggressive solicitors who offer debt collection services and in my experience, provide [… REDACTED]information to the leaseholder’s mortgage company to recover their fees.
LEASE is funded at tax-payers expense and should not align themselves with commercial entities which favour landlords/managing agents.
It would have been proper to use a firm of neutral survey companies who are not connected to the industry.
I am company secretary of an RMC who has been battling in the County Court for several years… so I for one, will NOT be participating in the Brady/LEASE survey.
The Chair of LEASE should either withdraw or resign.
In the quest for leasehold reform, it is plain that converting this medieval system to one more suited to the 21st century will take a little more time!
In the meantime, however, this does not mean that matters should remain on the back burner. Leaseholders must be protected from the now known scandalous and more often criminal abuses of specific freeholders..
There are good freeholders and there are bad freeholders, and the latter represent a relatively small group. It is this group that is utterly unscrupulous,in pursuit of ill-gotten gains.
And they are aided an abetted by unprincipled legal advisers.
Michael Holland has made the excellent proposal that a question be put to the PM at PMQ’s. May I suggest that such a question be prepared and put by Sir Peter Bottomley, and before the Housing & Planning Bill passes its final stages. .
This question should ask the PM to confirm that his government will ensure that existing laws provided by the LTA 1987 (as amended by the Housing Act 1996) and those provisions of the 2002 Act that have already been made effective,for the purpose of protecting leaseholders will be vigorously enforced.
The PM should be asked to confirm that there will be no hiding place for those for whom the custom of their trade is the calculated evasion of existing legislation, and the law in all respects will be enforced against them as well as against anyone providing assistance to them; that is legal advisers and senior employees.
“The PM should be asked to confirm that there will be no hiding place for those for whom the custom of their trade is the calculated evasion of existing legislation, and the law in all respects will be enforced against them as well as against anyone providing assistance to them; that is legal advisers and senior employees.”
Exactly, so many freeholders are hiding behind legal firms, who ‘act’ on their behalf. The law says that leaseholders are entitled to information about the freeholder. In our experience, we ve never had any contact or communication from our freeholder. A firm of solicitors, Bude Storz, write to us on his behalf and we have never been able to find any info about him. We have even been refused a consultation for the appointment of new management. What are they hiding?
A request to Campaign against retirement leasehold exploitation/LKP.
Could you please ask one of the MP’s who support you to raise this question at Prime Ministers Question Time.
As soon as is possible so we know where the PM stands on this issue.
Thanks.
So LEASE is using Brady solicitors and now ARMA is in partnership with Brethertons (they were used in the Chelsea Harbour case) to provide a series of webinar training sessions.
Will these be on debt collection I wonder as they were used by our ex managing agent to send threatening letters to us for unpaid invoices after we went RTM.
A few residents paid up with added costs as they were afraid of further consequences or lived elsewhere at the time, the rest of us contested the threat which was then dropped by Brethertons.
However the remainder of the so called debt has been apportioned out and as each resident sells they are forced to pay this amount.
It is only a relatively small amount which is why we would not dream of taking it to a tribunal but the principle remains as has been stated many times neither the managing agents or freeholders should be able to keep getting away with these threats.
LEGAL 500 LAW FIRM RATINGS
Area: Property Litigation
1. Brady’s Solicitors, Nottingham. Not rated.
2. Brethertons LLP. Banbury. Legal 500 Tier 3 firm. No outstanding reputation – or individuals.
3. Iliffes Booth Bennett, Uxbridge etc. Legal 500 Tier 1 firm. My ”go to” firm in past years.
“IBB (Iliffes Booth Bennett) ‘can compete with any Magic Circle firm in this area’. Andrew Olins (‘a fearsome litigator’) and Jon Mowbray (‘excellent at devising commercial solutions’) jointly lead a hugely experienced team, which also includes senior solicitor Ryan Diamond. The department draws on the firm’s highly regarded commercial property practice, and acts for clients such as Bellway Homes and Frontier Estates.
IBB are also pretty hot on Crime (fraud etc) again, being Tier 1.
“IBB (Iliffes Booth Bennett) is the ‘go-to firm for criminal defence work in West London’, with the ‘outstanding’, ‘exceptional’ Eddie Tang attracting considerable praise from clients; his cases included defending clients accused of robbery, GBH and violent disorder. Joanne Gibbons leads the team, which also includes the ‘fantastic, diligent’ Caroline Dunne.
When it comes to the money and the service charge accounts, only the best can be trusted to deliver good strong advice. You just know any debt collecting firm of solicitors is unlikely to be Tier 1. Ditto solicitors at LEASE wouldn’t be working for a quango if they were that hot.
There’s a lot of mediocrity about = the leasehold sector abounds with it. And to make up for their mediocrity, they have to bully and blackmail and puff themselves up. Take courage, my friend. Don’t let the buggers get you down.
Quote: “Working alongside LEASE, we hope that through this research, we can help leaseholders and the companies that manage their properties, to work better together and ensure the leasehold sector can be a successful source of new homes for the UK’s growing population.” Un Quote
In layman terms, this implies to me that they are looking for areas that we are all unhappy with, so that the legal profession can plan their attack on the leaseholders of this country and my advice is tell them nothing.
Remember what happened in 2010,2011,2012 when leaseholders starting complaining about subletting fees?
Suddenly every unscrupulous freeloading landlord in England started to get their big leasehold sticks out and demand money for subletting. Lots of seminars were popping up, advising commercial landlords and their managing agents on how to ensure they did exactly what they needed to do to stay within the law to extract more money from leaseholders.
Not a good idea to even start a conversation on this subject in my view.
As they say: other solicitors and managing agents are available who do act in a fair and responsible manner as I have found out in my 5 year search into what happens within this little monopoly called “Leasehold”.