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Judge Tim Powell explains First-Tier Tribunal … but leaseholders are not happy that justice is being done

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Tim Powell, a former London solicitor and now a judge in the First-Tier Tribunal, addressed the annual meeting of the Federation of Private Residents’ Associations on November 12.

His talk aimed at informing leaseholders of the changes that came into effect on July 1, replacing the old LVT.

He was accused of being “disingenuous” by a member of the audience when he emphasised that the property tribunals were a low-cost forum.

LKP is at a loss to explain why the Residential Property Tribunal Service is so keen to emphasise this – which struck a wrong note as two people who claim to have suffered significant financial loss as a result were in the audience.

Julian Shersby, from Sussex, lost £44,000 in leasehold litigation and publicly states that he blames LEASE, the Leasehold Advisory Service for misleading him into believing that costs would be limited to £500.

LEASE re-drafted its website on the guidance of LKP earlier this year.

Dennis Jackson, from Battersea, is another leaseholder who has suffered horrendous financial loss after believing that costs would be limited to £500 at the LVT.

He has had to pay £76,000 for the freeholders’ legal fees and his £800,000 flat was forfeited in January this year – a decision that LKP and Sir Peter Bottomley managed to get overturned.

LKP urges the RPTS to stop emphasising that it is a low-cost tribunal, when costs are limited only in certain circumstances. They can, in fact, be unlimited, and can be awarded by a superior court. The LVT in the Jackson case ruled that costs could not be levied from the service charge.

Lawyers – some unsavoury players in the leasehold game – have corroded the RPTS’s original intentions and intimidation by legal costs is routine.

It would also be gratifying to see the RPTS take a firmer line against lawyers playing the system against leaseholders: dumping a voluminous amount of submissions on the day of the hearing is not a coincidence, for example.

The number of leaseholders who loathe the RPTS and feel they have not had justice is a concern.

Further sources of worry are the scrappy and inefficient recording and archiving of RPTS decisions on what appear to be basic photocopies.

Spelling mistakes – even of the principals’ names – pages in the wrong order and an archiving system that is haphazard are not encouraging.

Finally, leaseholders could do with reassurance regarding the panel members who sit on the RPTS. Earlier this month, it emerged that Benjamin Mire, a controversial managing agent, would have been sacked from his judicial appointment following complaints that were heard earlier in the year. In fact, he resigned before this was necessary.

Is the RPTS confident that there are not other panel members who really should not sit on both sides of the bench?

Sir Peter Bottomley is certainly agitated on these issues. In his speech to the FPRA’s annual conference, which can be seen here, he warned that legal careers would be blighted if “conduct that is frankly scandalous” is not brought to an end.

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Comments

  1. Well the whole system is biased against the leaseholder. The Chairman of the FTT is usually a retired solicitor or barrister and, let’s face it he (or occasionally she) would prefer to deal with another solicitor and generally it is the rich landlords who can afford to appoint one. I’ve seen the “knowing nods and winks” that go on between the Chairman and the landlord’s solicitor. Leaseholders appearing in person are seen as a nuisance.

    And the second person on the panel is a valuer/surveyor, many of whom have worked for big landlords or are RICS members. Hardly independent I would say.

    That leaves the third panel member, the so called lay member. How are they appointed? I suspect a lot of them are appointed via the old boys’ network. How many lay members are leaseholders? I’ve no idea, but I suspect very few. It ought to be a requirement that the third member is a leaseholder.

    The system is stacked against leaseholders and is a gravy train for solicitors. Whether this will change appreciably under FTT is debatable. So much depends on the chairman, a retired solicitor!!

  2. Decisions accessed via the Court and Tribunal Sites are, for some time now, in HTML and Word. I understand that in future this will apply to the FTT-PC. As decisions have been typed in Word for a long time , there is I agree no excuse for a lack of accuracy and extracting the right names etc from the case files and transferring them to a PDF without printing and scanning!

    The Tribunal does remain a low cost option in so far as their costs. The argument is therefore whether they, AND “Lease”, should add a “health warning” as to the possibility of large costs under the lease, personally and/or in service charge, on appeal , the protections of CLRA sch 11, and to therefore first read their lease and take advice ( or ask LEASE for that).

    • Here is an example of a supposed HTML file on the Ministry of Justice website:
      http://www.residential-property.judiciary.gov.uk/Files/2013/September/LON_00AC_OCE_2013_165_25_Sep_2013_09_37_47.htm

      It is simply a reproduction of a photocopy, as is the PDF.

      For non-techies: a proper HTML file is what the articles on this website are. This means it is easy to find names or terms throughout the site and copy the material. A static reproduction of a photocopy is simply an image with no other archiving/ search possibilities other than the file name.

      This is an inadequate system, as Judge Siobhan McGrath conceded at the LEASE annual conference earlier in the year.

      • I am sure that the answer lies in the usually bizarre and paranoid Civil Service acquisition systems and rules about software…. However as documents are produced in Word, they are easily transferred, without printing or copying or scanning to a PDF, using Adobe or any number of cheap or freeware “virtual printers”.

        These include full Cntrl F search functionality, are easily uploaded, and do not require the additional step of HTML use. I know in one panel’s case it is in part a refusal of some staff to adapt and the inability to get new software installed without the cry for training funding etc, even though “it’s a piece of …..” 🙁

  3. The first resource of benefit to leaseholders would be a database of searchable LVT/FTT decisions and, in this day and age, it is frankly astonishing that such a database is not provided! As AM says there is no technical excuse, given that most decisions will be produced originally in Word.

    Consider for a start how many wasted costs and pointless cases might be avoided if the leaseholders understood, from their research into previous cases, that they were unlikely to succeed. Leaseholders are not lawyers, so even with all the legal resources available, they may be misled into believing that the law actually means what it says. Searchable decisions are used by all other courts for the convenience of solicitors and barristers, why not for leaseholders?

    I agree with Insider that the third panel member ought to be a leaseholder (chosen at random?) because I have witnessed too many cases of connivance. eg a barrister who exchanged email addresses with a panel chairman, and even a barrister who received a copy of a personal, private medical certificate sent to the LVT in confidence.

    We’ve come along way, but there’s a lot more to be done.

    • To a broad extent LEASE does offer that, and resources like BAILLI are searchable for subjects in the FTT and UTLC “and beyond”. Some like me do try and help in other fora, with “stickies” giving broad explanation of rights on insurance letting and underletting fees, major works and validity of invoices especially on “late fees” . Perhaps the forum should be opened up here, resources willing and LKP member firms encouraged, anonymously or otherwise, to contribute. I do spend some time on that as “charity work” 🙂 but its helped a lot of people, at least so they say in replies.

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