Competitors Are Referring PPMG/SPM Clients to TTAS!
By admin | March 26th, 2010 | Category: Past Articles | 4 commentsWe hope that all of the recent technical difficulties experienced in the last few weeks are sorted and do apologise for the lack of Solitaire / Peverel related posts. We trust you can all appreciate that our efforts have been focused on ensuring that TheTruthAboutSolitaire website was stable, before we re-commenced posting stories.
Despite our technical problems, it has been great to see the contributions of TTAS visitors on the web site – some of which has been incredibly enlightening.
Take for instance the comment added by ‘Neil’ yesterday, who’s estate are currently interviewing new property management companies (PMC) to replace Peverel and two of which referred him to TheTruthAboutSolitaire and mentioned the excessive insurance premiums of City Heights.
Just how many other PMC’s are referring clients to TheTruthAboutSolitaire for their own gain, when trying to replace Solitaire / Peverel associated companies? We’d like to know if you are a resident at a development, where a PMC has written to you to ask if you are happy with your current PMC and if you’d been referred to TTAS?
‘Shamon’ confirmed the name of the freeholder of the estate that they live at and what a surprise to find, that it was yet another Consensus Business Group ‘guise’ – in the name of Rosleb Ltd (confirmation of this link is available by clicking the following LVT case link)
‘Bruce’ and ‘Matt’ both identified that Rosleb Ltd had their registered office as 302 Regents Park Road (the same as Estates & Management, whom Victor Tchenquiz is a director of), but more importantly that Rosleb Ltd was an ‘Active’ company but with their last accounts returned, declared as ‘DORMANT’.
In our eyes, we assume that although Rosleb Ltd is obviously trading (Shamon wouldn’t be paying them otherwise) – their accounts must be being included within either E&M’s or CBG’s end of year accounts. Which is what happens as part of the Peverel Group Ltd end of year accounts, where they declare that XYZ companies are part of the group.
Who knows, but if there are any ‘Chartered Accountants’ out there who could shed light on this, it would be appreciated.
Another very interesting point is that, yet again there was an LVT action against a Consensus Business Group company, so just how many residents are currently fighting back against CBG / Peverel?
If you are currently in the process of undertaking an LVT, have recently won one or currently going through RTM / appointing a new PMC, please let us know, as we’d like to start collating nationwide statistics of where Solitaire / Peverel / CBG are losing business.
The LVT case that we refer to as ‘Archangel’ says, is a very interesting LVT determination and is we recommend that you read carefully, because it covers highly significant facts and issues.
It’s clear that the applicant had done their homework prior to applying to undertake the LVT. The reference to Section 20C order, where the Applicant requested that the Respondent (landlord / PMC) costs should not be recoverable from the service charges. (‘Archangel’ noted that – many leases state costs can be recovered from service charges, therefore it is most important to consider this when going for LVT)
There’s also a reference in the determination to a precedent judgement of the Lands Tribunal (Forcelux Ltd v Sweetman & another) – this is very interesting.
‘Archangel’ and our advice is to become very familar with your lease. At first it may appear a daunting task, however, once you have read through it, you start to understand just what is covered and you will then start to realise what charges you incur refer to. We did this ourselves and identified that the percentage contributions set out in our contract were lower than the percentage that SPM were charging us!
Therefore for over 5 years, SPM have ripped us of, because their accounting system is not billing the same percentages as set out in our leases.
We are currently in the process of obtaining information for our own LVT, to claw back these funds from Solitaire, because despite our continued attempts to speak with someone in the Account Department to explain this to them, they still will not acknowledge that they are overcharging us / have overcharged us!
Whilst on the subject of LVTs, ‘ArthurDent’ has been publishing some excellent advice in regards to legal terms and references, to obtain information such as ‘audited accounts’ – that are never very forthcoming.
‘ArthurDent’ has already published this info, but we’d like to make it easier to find:-
When trying to obtain your audited accounts sooner, rather than later, we recommend that you send the following to them:
Section 21 of the Landlord and Tenants Act 1985 states that for each accounting period a summary of costs must be provided to qualifying tenants within 6 months of the end of that said period and must be certified by a qualified accountant. It is a criminal and prosecutable offence not to do so.
As of this date today we have not received the audited year end accounts for _INSERT_DATE_.
As such I formally request that the audited year end accounts for _INSERT_DATE_ be provided to myself and all leaseholders
Once you have received the audited accounts, send them something along the lines of the following:
“Pursuant to Section 22 (2) of the Landlord and Tenants Act 1985 I formally request reasonable facilities and access to view invoices and all other documents or be provided copies of the same to support the audited accounts for year end _INSERT_DATE_ which we received __INSERT_DATE.
Section 22 (4) of the same Act also states that this request should be facilitated within one month of the request.”
We hope that you’ll agree that some of the facts we have published are essential reading and look forward to reading your comments on the above.
Finally, the deadline for the No.10 Downing Street Petition is drawing closer and is now just over two weeks away! Currently, the petition has 1326 signatures – a figure that has certainly impressed us, but we know we can get even more people to support it, so please, if you haven’t already done so, let neighbours, family, friends and co-workers know about it and get them to sign it!
A few people have asked what we plan to do once the petition has been submitted to No.10?
TTAS have only been promoting the petition, to highlight awareness of the petition to gain more support and hasn’t been ran in conjunction with ourselves, but Darren Rossiter (who did start it) – has been a contributor to TTAS and we look forward to hearing from him with an update, following the passing of the deadline.
As always, please keep your questions and comments coming, but please be patient if you e-mail us, we do receive many messages and takes time to reply to you all. (We’ll get there in the end – we promise!!)
[ADMIN EDIT 11.06am]
Following the question raised by ‘Worth’ as to whether Stonedale Property Management were associated with Peverel. Other contributors have confirmed that they are associated, so yet another ‘guise’ to be aware of.
Once the petition deadline is reached, the appropriate minister will draft a response with their thoughts etc. 500 signatures were neeeded for this to happen, so we are well over target and a reply from the government should follow soon after the close date.
Thanks for the information about Pembertons and Stonedale.
Looking back to the comment about accountants in Solitaire not acknowledging the over/undercharging,would they be able to if the Solitaire,Barnet office is closed down?
I live in London and sent a questionaire to 4 prospective PMCs, using the ARMA model as the starting point, including the question “What is your experience of taking over block management from Peverel OM?”
All 4 had taken over blocks. One experienced had considerable problems. One of them told me it used to be terrible but that things had improved since Lee Middleburgh sent a letter to ARMA members a couple of years ago apologising and promising to do better. Three of them felt that the takeovers now were OK with required information handed over. One had taken over 4 different blocks and another seemed to be presently winning one a month.
Thinking back to one of Matt’s earlier comments the implications seem to be that there is a steady leakage which may impact how Peverel resources itself. Fewer estate managers and a bigger legal department? From private comments given to me by others, who are more advanced in the RTM than I, it would appear that Peverel no longer has time to object and obstruct which augurs well for our legal bill.
May I add something to the very valuable info from Arthur Dent above. I have requested invoices through the Estate Manager, without threat, some of which were provided. Where not provided it was not malicious as they sent things I did not request. However even with the invoices I still could not reconcile with the accounts.
I recently followed the advice of Bella and Jon Dyson and requested by Royal Mail the ‘audit trail’ for five years. I received a document through the post called ‘Review Notes’ but only for one year. I then requested by email the Review Notes for the last five years which were sent on an excel spreadsheet. For the first time ever I can understand how the figures in the accounts are produced as the Review Notes include not only every invoice but opening and closing accruals.
One of the real problems with Peverel is the turnover of staff. We have had three estate managers in two years and not less than a different admin person each year. One of the reasons for the published accounts not making sense is that the same type of expenditure has been categorised differently over the years.
I can also see that in the last two years we have spent over £1,500 on ‘drain repairs’. We have an underground sewage pump which I know for sure broke down last year as we had a week’s sewage for the whole block deposited on our car. (Never mind the poor mechanic.) But now I see for the first time that we have ‘mechanical breakdown insurance’ to cover just such events and yet the policy has not been claimed against.