Sorry my post was a little confusing.
Solitaire pay the insurance over I believe 6 months and we still have until March to run (RTM granted 25/11.09). My point was to perempt Solitaire and Oval (insurance broker used by Solitaire)to change the details on the policy otherwise it is useless.

Solitaire will hold a portion of the reserve fund back to cover these costs but again from my experience nothing was done until I requested it on the hand over date and we are still discussing some bills. Solitaire have three months to consolidate and produce a final closing balance The more information Solitaire send the more confusing it becomes.
Indeed it would also be wise to request Solitaire hold a small sum back until you have had time to check all the accounts.
And when you request an account balance after the first month (when and if Solitaire do not appeal against RTM)make sure it is requested from the accounts department not just a guess from the property manager, ours was £4000 out?
Once you have this balance you can work out if you have adequqte funds to run the company.
What you can do is request any further service charges are suspended together with any planned non essential works. We cancelled the external decorating after we had quotes on average £3000 cheaper.
The Section 94 quote came from a request to my MP and came from The House of Commons library and is from a publication from the LVS so my apologies for that.

Althought the property manager has to serve notice on contractors, and the RTM process effectively cancels existing contracts between manager and contractor, it would be unwise to cancels all contracts in one go. Especially if your block contanis lifts, water pumps, powered access gates, entry phone systems as so on.

This would also be extremely unwise if you are self-managing.

If you’re insured via a PPMG (Peverel) broker, your new manager should be able to find a cheaper quote. Likewise with electricty supplier as many of these things are just set up and never properly managed, checked or improved upon. It’s not PPMG who are out of pocket but YOU the service charge bill payer.

Jon above refers to an excerpt from the RTM guide, available online from the Leasehold Advisory Service, but I think where he mentions LVT he’s referring to the LAS.

If you can’t get your hands on your reserves, the LVT is the next option, but the tribunal takes a dim view of this route being the “norm” as opposed to the “exception”. In fairness to any property manager, they might have outstanding bills to be paid. Although funds should be transferred on acquisition day the law actually says (Sec 94 (4)): “..on the acquisition date or as soon after that date as is reasonably practicable.” Which can appear a bit vague.

You have to tread a fine line, otherwise if you wait for a tribunal hearing that could take a minimum of 10 weeks,in which time you might not have any cash to run your new company.

Section 94 of the Common and Leasehold Reform Act 2002 which provides that where the Right to Manage is acquired there is a duty on:

(a) landlord under a lease of the whole or any part of the premises,
(b) party to such a lease otherwise than a landlord or tenant, or
(c) a manager appointed under Part 2 of the 1987 Act in relation to the premises, or any premises containing or contained in the premises
TO PAY THE ACCURED UNCOMMITED SERVICE CHARGES ON THE DATE OF AQUISTION.
The LVT explains this as follows
Where the landlord has collected service charges in advance but not yet spent them all and is holding the remainder in atrust account, he is under an obligation to hand over all the unspent sums to the RTM company. These will not only include unspent charges but any reserve account or sinking fund. This does not require a notice from the RTM company- the legislation requires the landlord to act and to make a payment to the RTM company equal to those uncommited sums held by him on the aquistion date or “as soon after that date as is reasonably practicable”
The amount to be paid is the sum of:

# monies paid by the leaseholders as service charges; PLUS
# monies invested from service charge payments (and any interest); LESS
#the landlord’s outgoings on the provision of services up to the acquistion date.

This will save you alot of work.

Hope this helps

If every development completes RTM, then Solitaire would have nothing left to manage, and would therefore become surplus to requirements. Which frankly would be nothing more than they deserve…..

Admin – can you set up a counter, to log how many developments have successfully completed RTM (and how many individual properties are involved), together with ones that are currently going through the RTM process (and again, number of individual properties involved). Obviously there’s Paul’s little development of 3 units that’s completed RTM, and Jon Dyson’s development (which is somewhat larger, I think…???), but how many more are there…???

You’d presumably need help from contributors on this website to provide details (or perhaps you already know?), but I’m sure there’s plenty of willing helpers ready to provide details, as required…!!!

Would be interesting to know the figures. Might also help Solitaire & co. to realise that they are slowly losing properties, and therefore opportunities to make money, and therefore perhaps they might pull their fingers out to get things done, in order to deter other developments from heading down the RTM route, further cutting their revenue streams…..

You can buy the RTM forms from Oyez: http://www.oyezformslink.co.uk/f_chapters/90.htm

But as I’ve said here you can do most of the admin work yourself and get a solicitor to serve the notices thus reducing costs. By admin I mean download or simply get your neighbours to photocopy the lease, and unfortunately that means every page – even if the content is the same for each flat. I think you need the Land Registry Title Entry as well – that’s downloadable.

The existing property manager or freeholder must supply a list of tenants – but this sometimes is not up to date. If your block is set up in such a way that each tenant holds a £1 share in a company, and that company is represented by a property manager, the tenant bit of the company will have accounts filed at Companies House listing all the members and their addresses, also downloadable.

The RTM company has to go to exhaustive lengths to ensure notice of participation can be served on neighbours. For example if a flat was empty for six months and the only address you have is for the flat as opposed to the owner – you could find that you have to place an ad in Estates Gazette or a local paper in order to demonstrate you have tried to find the owner.

That’s why the minimum timetable is probably not achieveable save for the smallest of blocks. The claim notice alone for our block extended to 12 pages. Doing the admin leg work ourselves took three months. I really, really, would strongly advise anyone of thinking of doing this to get some legal advice. The savings on your service charge bills should cover the legal fess within a couple of years.

If you serve notice yourself, receive a counter notice and you have not got a solicitor. You’ll have to find one, sign their terms and conditions, go to their office with your passport to be witnessed (half a day off work possibly). Have the cash to place on account. You’ll need copies of the leases, and most crucially: plans for your develpoment, although there is usually a copy in your lease. As I’ve also said, there is a reluctance on the part of some solicitors to appear at LVTs. Some do, but don’t automatically assume they will. Once they’ve got all that, only then can they start your claim to the LVT. The claim to the LVT has to be written in legal English following the strict guidance from the tribunal there is no form for this, you need all the notices and it has to be assembled and paginated in chronological order. And don’t assume your LVT application will be fast tracked (heard in ten weeks), if it is complex and therefore standard tracked it takes much longer and sometimes you need a pre-hearing to gather the facts adding months to the process. In some case hearings are dealt with without either the applicant or respondant attending, but both parties have to agree to this.

From my experience the solicitors of property managers will take advantage of the fact that you don’t have legal representation – they will probably file a counter notice on the last day of the deadline, having sat on it for three months, or ignore letters about negotiating a solution. The counter notice must be served on the RTM Co’s registered office, so this could further delay matters: for eg, a resident who was away when the notice was served.

I hope that helps, and if you’re driving the RTM process and work. Or work in a job where you can’t take calls during the day you’ll be further disadvantaged. But RTM is an excellent solution so don’t be put off.

In my opinion, it’s best to avoid the prospect of an LVT (more time off work) and make sure you stick to the absolute letter of the 2002 Act.

I’d like to hear how people have got on if they have done RTM without legal support. But even though we have two directors, a RA cttee of 3, a city of London solicitor and the opinion of two barristers (one direct access), I reckon I’ve spent two hours a day on the RTM process for the past six months, and about three hours a day for the six months before that – and we’re talking about a medium size develpoment of 40.

Draft on RTM Company Process

Please do add or correct to make it winning formula. Let us all work together and accept offering what ever form they come even written in bad English like mine.

Right to mange is a right which landlord can not object if the right criteria are followed.

Once The RTM Company takes over then

1. Accounts are frozen

2. No new members can be accepted so it is important to have 51% before serving notices by RTM Company. You must have name and addresses of all the leaseholders. You have correct name and address of the freeholder/landlord.

It will be advisable send by registered mail so it can be proven it was sent. Make sure it is LANDLORD itself, whose address will be found at the bottom of the letter head. Receiving invoice or correspondence from a company for ground rent does not mean that they are the landlord as they could be appointed agent. As our management company keep changing names so make sure RTM Company is serving on the right name and address or you will fail.

The RTM Company process:
1. RTM COMPANY serves SECTION 78 on the NON MEMBER OF the COMPANY to join ( that is why it is important to have all names and addresses prior to RTM process or you will fail) after that membership is frozen and no one can join.

Time period allowed to join after serving notice is: 14 days

2. After 14 days RTM COMPANY serves SECTION 79 on the land lord at their registered address which you should already know to serve.

Time period allowed after serving notice is: 1 month and the last date of the month is known as the Determination Date.

RTM process is complete if there is no response from the freeholder or objection lodged.

The power to mange the property will be affective and resume after 3 Months from Determination Date. Only now you have the right to join new members/shareholders on the board.

Time taken is = 14 days+ 1 month +3 months

Total time would be 4 months and 14 days if every thing goes as planned.

OR IF LANDLORD OBJECTS and puts COUNTER NOTICE:

Time period to find solution: 8 weeks to lift the objection otherwise you will fail. You have to go through LVT to log your defence. To transfer the power to manage can only then happen after the LVT hearing which is likely to be a minimum of 10 or more weeks or freeholder with draws the objection. It will be very costly business so make sure your papers are in order and you have back up plan if things go wrong.

Total time taken: 14 days+ 1 month+8 weeks+ 10 weeks or so for LVT hearing.

Total time would be = around 9 months or so.

I believe our Management Company will be a fool to object. It will be useful to hear from the leaseholders who failed so we can iron out any objections prior to filing for RTM Company.

Here admin to consider supplying templates/info for:

1. Do and don’ts to be a win the right to mange.

2. Templates of how to fill section 78 and 79 even a few filled examples so it can be followed to T.

3. In house solicitor to give advice if landlord objects.

4. To down load a programme for accounts purposes which keeps all the rerecords of whole accounts for the building and individual flats including invoices and statements directly ready made to down load and send. Ready made templates for sending debt collecting letters and notices and so forth. A complete package for self management so one can hire someone for a few hours to log the information if need to.

Your in put is vital especially from those who failed and the reason why.

The absolute first thing is to establish that at least one person is prepared to stand as a RTM company director and informally try to work out if there’s enough interest before setting up the company.

The notice served on neighbours inviting them to participate in the RTM process, is actually served in the name of the RTM company or in essence its director/s. The company shoudl grow in size until you achieve just over half.

ADMIN: Is it possible to provide a link to the Leasehold Advisory Service’s RTM guide (in addition to Lease’s home page)? This provides a full step-by-step guide, and a summarised timetable at the end. Or you could cut and paste the summary into a new posting?

And Re Point 6 (4) above… some leases do provide such a company. We couldn’t use it to take over the RTM as it included some freehold houses.

Finally I can’t stress this point enough: but the CALR Act 2002 is still very new in terms of establishing case law so don’t be surprised if there’s something about your block or develpoment that might raise questions to which there are not immediate or legally guaranteed answers.

Because you don’t need to prove the freeholder or its management company negligent it IS your right to take over management. But the freeholder will in turn want to make sure you’ve done all the admin correctly, and within the timetable of the 2002 Act. A quick look at some RPTS decisions will show some of the fundamental mistakes RTM cos make, such as including non-company members in a claim notice.

Also the definition of a qualifiying building can be open to interprtation and I’ve heard fo cases where pre-tribunal reviews have involved the LVT panel visiting a site and measuring the distance between building boundaries.

Finally, you can appoint a new managing agent on what ever terms the company sees fit, and it is advisable to have a three month notice period in your contract so you can change company if you need to. I’m sure most people would research their company first, and probably give them a year to settle in.

Please do correct/add any additional info to make a winning formula. (if anybody got time to edit my postings that will be much appreciated otherwise I am afraid you will be subjected with my bad English. Please admin forward my e-mail if help offered)

Information is complied from TTAS contributors as follow:

It is utmost important that correct criteria is followed. If you fail RTM then you will be punished by not letting you reapply for years.

1.Check if the building is right for RTM
If there are more then one block then one can apply for RTM, however all the rest of the leaseholders in other blocks must be served notices too.

If anyone has more info on building requirements please help.

2.Form an Association of leaseholders which requires 51% membership.

3.All the leaseholders name and contact details are required of the block/s as non members need to be served notices as per requirement of RTM. Someone has already given pointers in the past tag how to go about and I will try to contribute further.

4.Once all the above listed items are in place then you are ready to form your Limited Company which needs the Article of Association. There is no need for other memorandum any more. Now is the time to hire a solicitor if need to. Finally the Limited Company must be registered at The Companies House. There is nominal fee for registration and fee per year.

5.New Management Company needs to be in place. Have a contract ready for the Management Company and between you. Basic one can be used from RTM.

One can self manage but to remove any OBJECTIONS FROM THE LANDLORD IS VITAL TO WIN RTM, therefore, it would be recommendable to hire a Management Company on trial for 3 to 6 months. Having said that it creates a lot of changes but does gives time for you to prepare for final take over if you are not professional as lawyer, accountant and so forth.

I managed a block for 3 years in 2006 and was on the management board as a director and company secretary, provided in house all the services such as:
Accounts – we had an accountant to finalise the books and audit and used his address for registering the company address. We were lucky that our lease already had Limited Company and leaseholder Association which gave the power to appoint Management Company. There was no reason to go to RTM. In house services were:
Issuing shares
Debt collecting
Conveyance work when the property is bought and sold from one leaseholder to other
Dealing with anti social behaviour, drug dealers and so forth, for the few months it was a battlefield which I won even suffered attempted attack and threats of all sort. Once trouble maker knew we had zero tolerance, remaining within the law and cannot be touched they left one after the other. Now I have left and replaced with a solicitor who has a easy job to carry the work.

I may write later and you must wait for that. I was lucky to have a right hand director, who computerised the system and a volunteer, who was retired general manger, who edited my English, admin work, kept a watchful eye in the block and above all kept me on straight and narrow. I charged for the services 10% without VAT on my company name. If others agree then the services can be provided for non payment of the service charge which is better for tax proposes. I put far more hours for providing the best money can buy then I was charging. You have to charge otherwise every one is saving far more at your back and who knows you will be blamed for all sort. The problems may come from ex management company supporters or new ones who wants take over the Management to skim off the money.

6.Make sure you have sufficient funds to finalise RTM process. If you need solicitor then you have to pay in advance.

Here admin to consider supplying templates and info and may be campaign:
1.How to go about getting names and addresses of each leaseholder in the block/s
2.Contract between a Management Company and the Leaseholder Company/ Association
3.The Article of Association
4.To start a campaign that all the builders must have in their lease already formed Limited Company with the Article of Association which gives power to the owners to appoint Management Company. Finally, all the land must be sold as a package when the properties are sold to the owners. Landlords to be vanished for good. We need to reform from the root rather then fighting the right to manage and buy the land back from the landlords.

Your in put is vital especially from those who failed and the reason why