Westbury Homes were subsumed into Persimmon in 2006 (I believe) . To the best of my knowledge Persimmon have used Peverel OM (now simply OM) as the ‘manager’ on their new build estates for some time and the leases on these properties reflect this legal fact.

Apart from taking the advice already given by others on this site, I think it a very good idea to contact those referred to in your above comment. I would also advise a visit to your local Citizens Advice Bureau for further assistance.

Now they are apologising for all the distress caused and again changed the name of the company. We started with Westbury Homes (3.5 years ago) and then changed to Solitaire and then again to OM.

I am thinking to writing to BBC Watch dog, the famous Dom (Dominque – I think) as ask them if they can investigate under ROUGE TRADERS.
SB
SB

However, your transfer / the management lease sets out what you have to pay for, and even if you have concerns you will need to pay the demand and then take it up with them. You should not withhold payment if it has been legally demanded, and at the end of the day it is your estate which will suffer. Once you have had a chance to see the actual accounts you will be in a position to dispute the amounts charged.

Insurance will be public liability etc (you have to insure Peverel etc). It will contain the 20%+ kickback scam from the insurers. Electricity will be for street lighting, common systems like gates, CCTV, foul water pumping. Management fee should be a fixed amount per property eg £85 + VAT pa. If you are on a big estate with not much requiring expenditure this can be a large proportion, but 93% is absurd. Your total bill must therefore be very low – less than £200 pa, which is very fair.

If you do not have CCTV are they proposing to install one ?

The reply I received from Solitaire are as follows:
As you will be aware from the terms or your transfer documentation the service charge is payable in advance. The estimates we have produced for the year commencing 1st April 2010 are merely estimates based upon likely costs for the year up to 31st March 2011. Please refer to the letter attached for the reason for the inclusion of the sum for CCTV.

We can confirm that we will not be actively pursuing the sums owing for the period ending 31st March 2010 until such time as the actual expenditure is finalised by the auditors but would ask, as per previous correspondence, that payment for the current financial year is made to ensure that we can maintain cash flow. Any sums which have been estimated but not spent will be credited back to the residents and will clearly show on the audited accounts.
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They formed a resident association and invited me but did not specify the date of the meeting only said \monday\. Surely, this is not right. I along with many of the residents did not pay the bills.

Any comments would be helpful

SB

Thank you for the insight. It never amazes to suprise me where Peverel have stuck their tentacles and just out of interest how they have managed it.

I’m not ‘Southhalls’, so obviously I cannot answer your question.

But I am aware that there are many small clusters of quite large and expensive houses that sit behind electronic gates and have an ‘estate’ and some shared facilities (the gates / pump for sewerage etc and possibly some shared roadway and gardens)- I know someone who lived on such a site and paid ‘maintenance’ for the upkeep of the same. The property is now sold but it was a nightmare scenario, and I believe that at least 1 of the 5 ‘nice’ detached houses was mortgaged to NORTHERN ROCK!!!

There must be thousands of such sites and doubtless Peverel managed to get a foothold in some for longer term gain on owning the freehold or leasehold of the ‘common grounds’ and collecting a nice little annual service charge for the so-called ‘maintenance,.

In addition to the excellent advice above.

Not sure how old the development is, and it may be too early, but request in writing a copy of the latest accounts (which will not provide enough detail) together with an audit trail for as far back as possible. The audit trail will show a summary of every single invoice and then you can start tracking from there.