Calling All Residents Undertaking RTM / LVT
By admin | March 28th, 2010 | Category: Past Articles | 23 commentsTo try and encourage more residents / developments to undertake RTM and on the suggestion of a few contributors to TheTruthAboutSolitaire, we would like to hear from you if you are currently undertaking an RTM / LVT that involves any of the Consensus Business Group / Peverel Group companies, or you’ve been successful enough to get rid of them without the need of the above.
It would be interesting to know just how many developments are currently trying to remove PG / CBG PMC’s and where they are in the UK.
Once we start to hear from people, we’ll start publishing the list of residents on a dedicated page, similar to the latest link that lists all of the CBG / PG associated companies.
Why not also let us know who you have appointed to replace our friends, so that we can build up a catalogue of recommended PMC’s.
One of the advantages of publishing this information will not only be to highlight just how many estates they are losing, but will also hopefully encourage any would-be buyers to be save in the knowledge that they won’t be paying fees to any of the CBG / PG companies.
Post any relevant information below and this will be added, but ideally we’d like to know the following:-
Estate / Development
Location
When did you commence LVT / RTM? (if applicable)
When were Solitaire / Peverel / CBG replaced?
Who are your new PMC?
Background info on your experience
We look forward to hearing from you.
Old School Court
Dunstable
Bedfordshire.
We replaced Solitaire on 25th November 2009 with a RTM Company.
Before starting source a Company who can carry out the process,We used Leasehold Advice Centre.
Call a meeting and let everyone know of your intentions or post details.
Find out who owns and who rents, ask for the estate agents who represent the owner renters.
Try to ensure you get as many people on board as possible as the cost of the process is usually per flat and although the Leasehold Advice Centre offer payment by two installments please do it by one as getting money out of people twice will be a task in itself.
Agree that if there is enough money in the funds held by Solitaire that individuals will be refunded the process cost. This makes it a little more palatable.
Also very importantly inform everyone that if they are in arrears you will have to legally chase this once the process is complete or agree a payment plan.
Inform your property manager that you require an up to date account balance from the Accounts Dept to give you an idea of the funds.
Ensure Peverel etc only charge you for thier services monthly as this saves chasing the money later.
Your communal gas/electricity will now be with EDF as Peverel changed this on Jan 1st 2010. It is extremely important that you source your meter and now start sending monthly readings to your property manager and insist these are forwarded to EDF. To ensure this happens ask for a copy of the last paid bill and check the reading.(We have stayed with EDF after a nightmare as Soltaire illegally took our contract with them. During the 3 month handover period you can speak with EDF, I can publish details later about the standing charge. On your current bill you are in a contract so it will be very low,6-8p per day. Ours went upto £1 per day as we were out of contract due to Solitaires incompetence)
Ensure you have copies of all other contracts such as lift contracts, cleaning and landscaping contracts.
Again it is very important to check that all work is up to standard and has been carried out if it has been paid for as this will save you an avalanche of workafter hand-over.
SEND EVERYTHING RECORDED DELIVERY AND BY E-MAIL AND START A FILE UP AND KEEP A COPY OF EVERYTHING.
Suggest everyone digs out a copy of the lease and reads through it. You will later have to send a letter regarding the up holding of the covenants such as parking, replacement of like for like dors and windows etc.
Again it is important to stress that just because Peverel et al have not conformed to the lease covenants it is not the way you will manage.
You will also need a copy of the last Chartered Suveyors rebuild cost for when you change the block insurance and a copy of the Fire Safety risk assessment which is a legal requirement for the management company to perform.
Lastly be as firm as possible with your Property manager and where possible back all requests up with the law as per Arthur Dent with the information access.I threatened our property manager with legal action and I had a response two hours later by phone.
Admin if you wish to add to this post as more people come forward please do so or if you think a list format would be easier then please change it, I may do so.
When I have time I can do the next stage “The three month handover period” and what people need to do here followed by “Life after Solitaire”
Hopefully this will allow everyone going RTM to pace themselves rather than drowned in a sea of admin and legalities as I nearly did and please please in the first year use a specialist company such as Jordans to manage all the secretarial duties you will have enough on your plate and the legalities can be quite daunting. We paid £570 for the year for 18 flats…..and they will provide you with a company address with that as your lease will probably stipulate no property can be used for business purposes.
Regards
Jonathan Dyson
Eden Gardens
Rowley Regis
Our site consists of 14 properties in two apartment blocks. (6 apartments in each block and 2 adjoining coachhouses, all leasehold.)
We began the legal process in late 2008, with a planned takeover date of 1 October 2009. Some unforeseen legal issues meant this did not occur. However, the RTM has now gone through uncontested with effect from 1st April 2010.
Our new property manager is a locally based company named Cottons. They have been looking after our site since 1 October 2009 and are doing an excellent job. Solitaire has yet to release details of full accounts / reserves to us. Our new property manager is chasing this.
Solitaire have not had a visible or active role in managing our site for over two and half years, following a long-running dispute over escalating charges, lack of access to accounts and very little of the alleged work actually being carried out. Throughout this period Solitaire assured us that our accounts were ‘on hold’, although we recently received a bill for service charges dating to 31 March 2010. Yet when we contacted Solitaire’s accounts dept to query this, they claim to have ceded responsibility for our site with effect 31 March 2009. Weird.
To our further surprise and confusion, last month contractors appointed by Solitaire visited our site to inspect and ‘repair’ an ongoing problem with the emergency lighting and fire alarms.
Thankfully Cottons were already in the process of dealing with this, and their electrician discovered that the work carried out by Solitaire’s contractors was so poor it had not resolved the problem, had caused further problems, and he had to rip out and replace all of the wiring they had messed with.
Cottons have also ascertained that in the 5 years since our site was built, neither the electricity nor water companies supplying the communal areas have received a penny from Solitaire, despite charges for communal electricity and water being included in our services charges.
Furthermore, our site is one of the ‘Fortune 500′ and we are considering applying for an LVT in respect of the historic insurance premiums charged by Kingsborough / Oval / Zurich.
Will keep you posted.
A WORD OF CAUTION
Some leases (probably applicable to sites that have been built since 2002) contain within one of the Schedules (The 6th in mine) a Part A (Development Costs) and a Part B (Block costs).
RTM gives the right to manage the block(s) only, Peverel (or one of their many cousins) will maintain the management of the wholw development (grounds/bin areas/parking etc) for a specified perioed of time (5 years after the sale of the last leasehold property on site in my case).
I cynically believe that this was done to “get round” the 2002 Landlord and Tenant Act and the RTM rights given to leaseholders in the Act.
But this does not rule out trying to get the management of the development once all blocks have gone RTM.
Bridge Farm Walk
Bristol
We removed Solitaire by requesting that Estates & Management appoint our chosen management company BNS Management Services.
Myself and another neighbour went door to door and asked residents opinions of SPM.
All of us shared the same views, so we went to BNS Management Services and requested a quote for our estate. (They were almost £10k cheaper than SPM and our management fees have dropped to less than £13k PA for the whole estate).
E&M then advised they’d tender the contract, which we were against and therefore again got residents to sign a letter confirming that they wanted BNS to be appointed and not any other company. We also advised E&M that if they didn’t appoint BNS, we’d go RTM as we had 29 residents out of 32 who supported us!
It took about 6 months for our request to be actions and BNS took over the estate on the 1 November 2009.
BNS have been a breath of fresh-air, whereby you actually speak with your property manager, who visits to investigate your issues e.g. SatTV, Downpipes leaking, etc.
Our old managing agent wasn’t (I think) related to Solitaire, but it sounds like they were of a similar level of rapaciousness and incompetence. We just got rid of them using RTM, and life is considerably better!
I second all of the points made by Jon Dyson above, but would also strongly recommend not trying to handle the process yourself. We got a solicitor who specialises in the RTM process; she charged a fixed fee of £800 for the entire building, and picked up on a number of points that we had completely missed, making the process much smoother. In particular, after we’d officially gained the right to manage but before the acquisition date, the old manager sent us a letter with a number of carefully-phrased lies about the RTM company’s responsibilities, perhaps intending to mislead us into making mistakes in our early management of the block and make it possible for them to lever themselves back in later. The solicitor told us precisely what was wrong and how.
Anon – who exactly were your old managing agents…??? As you will have seen from other threads on this website, the web of interlinked companies is vast. Give us a name, and let’s see where it possibly leads…..
Ref my first comment above – I gave the 2002 Act an incorrect name! I should have written the 2002 Commonhold & Leasehold Reform Act. Apologies
Anon
Maybe you should post the name of the solicitor you used?
£800 is a very good price, how many flats are there in your development?
Did the solicitor form you RTM Company too?
The Leasehold Advice Centre charged £150 plus vat per flat.
Jon — it’s just a 4-flat converted house, so if they tend to charge per-flat, £800 isn’t as cheap as it might sound — she did form the RTM Company as well, though. I’ll not post her name or the name of the managing agent on this thread (helps to remain anonymous
but will add another comment re: the agent later on another thread so that the details are passed on. I think they’re independent, though.
£800 is cheaper than my charges! This now makes me think that a page should be put together with the charges that we receive!Could we not then get an idea if the charge is based on location, size or how much Peverel can get away with? Who regulates this company?
Worth
The charges being referred to on this post are what developments / blocks have paid for the Right to Manage process, not the service charges that are currently paid by developments that are pre-RTM to their Property Management company – be it Solitaire, OM, Peverel or whoever.
The issue of service charges and annual service charge increases features on another post which was active earlier in the year. It can be accessed from the list of posts within the list of Months to the right.
Anon
Ok did not know how many flats you had.
So the £175 we paid sounds quite competetative.
We were a Peverel managed development (50 flats) and at the beginning of this year finally managed to get rid of them via an RTM (after a lot of hard work). I believe we are also one of the “500″ and are in the process of getting together as much information as possible with the intention of taking them to an LVT. However, although they approached me to have a meeting in order to try and settle matters, they have been extremely reluctant in coming forward with any information since. They seem to have a policy of sending huge amounts of information, little of which responds to the questions asked and it is very difficult to make any sense of. We are also going to seek to have the costs of forming the RTM (around £5000) refunded together with a refund in past service charges due to bad management. There appears to have been a great lack of due care and dilligence regarding getting quotes for jobs and signing off invoices. There are also a number of other matters we are looking into.
Since we have our new managing agent (Adair Paxton of Leeds) things are entirely different. So far, so good.
Carole,
Congratulations on your RTM achievement.
I agree entirely that post-RTM life is completely different.
Dealing with people who are polite,open and willing to listen to your opinions is a shock to the system!
You state that you “are going to seek to have the costs of forming the RTM (around £5000) refunded..” Would I be right in thinking that this will be a part of your LVT allication?
TO ALL INTERESTED IN RTM: Please note (I have not posted on here for a while), that: It is NOT strictly, legally true that Solitaire or a PPMG company is legally entitled to retain management of the estate areas or grounds, post RTM.
They used this excuse to issue a counter notice to our RTM claim.
We had the case looked at by Counsel – worth every penny. And he filed an application to the LVT. PPMG ignored the dealine for a response set by the LVT, then simiply withdrew their objection.
The legal issue is over “appurtenant land” so if you are invoking your RTM and are told a PPMG company will be retaining management you should challenge this legally. The RTM company SHOULD be able to manage this part of the develpoment. Let’s face it there aren’t too many blocks with no surrounding land.
And why would you want to have two companies managing your estate and block?
I can’t name our development as there are some other outstanding matters.
I’ve just re-read Archangel’s post about appurtenant land.
Please be very wary of this tactic being used by PPMG companies.
In simple terms, RTM should include management of the surrounding estate. It is a complex legal area though. I heard about one develpoment with 14 separate blocks, so they would need 14 separate RTM companies. The issue over maintenance of the access road would probably be very complex and therefore probably vest with the original managers.
But for simple RTM claims, this looks like a new way of trying to bamboozle RTM cos and their solicitors. It cost us a couple of grand to use a barrister but was well worth it. I can’t cite our application to the LVT for you to all use as “case law” because the hearing did not need to happen. But I have sent Admin the name of the chambers we used – and this particular barrister is “direct access” so you can instruct him directly.
Anon2
Thank you very, very much for this most interesting information.
My earlier comments were based on what I read in my lease (and nobody – Solicitor or new Managing Agent – countered my interpretation)
However,what you say makes logical sense for these reasons:
1. If we encounter, say a drainage problem in the block, then the problem may lie both in the block and outside the block – who then has responsibility for fixing it / paying for it if their are now two management companies involved – Peverel for the site and the RTM for the block?
2. The external lights in the car-parking areas feed out of the electricity meters within the blocks, so currently some blocks are paying for a site item that is currently the responsibility of Peverel.
3. The Accounts produced by Peverel are split between the development and the blocks, with each set of accounts showing a management fee. However, the costs for the bank charges, accountants and sudit have always been entered on the development set of accounts. This means that when a block goes RTM it is paying towards costs that are striictly speaking no longer applicable to that block.
I’m so pleased that you returned to the TTAS site and thanks again for this really helpful pointer.
Anon
Reference your comment about 14 blocks and 14 RTM companies.
We have a purpose built development with three seperate blocks.
The company who dealt with our RTM had to serve seperate notices for each block but the RTM was formed under a single company representing the development.
As per our development I believe a notice has to be served for each block but a single RTM Company can be formed to manage them.
I can only go by our example. In fact we have freehold houses that pay a service charge. Even though they are not eligible to join the RTM company, they still have to pay their way via the new managing agents. Likewise the RTM co has a duty to look after the houses on behalf of the freeholder.
As I’ve said in the past on here, the legislation introduced in 2002 is still relatively new in terms of establishing case law. Precedents will evolve as the RTM process continues to grow.
Had we had two managing agents involved, it would have meant flat owners paying two service charge bills while the houses pay one.
It is a grey area and I believe PPMG cos are exploiting this to retain some control and earn some fees. I’m not surprised that a solicitor did not question this. In the course of our RTM I’ve spoken to at least four solicitors and two barristers all with slightly differing views. Where I’ve posted in the past that it’s wise to consider the best legal advice, my points have been countered by people saying they did not use a solicitor, used a company that does the whole package, no-win-no-fee or low cost solicitors.
I guess you get what you pay for and our counsel was superb. He never really needed to focus on the legal issues as it turned out the counter notice was not completed correctly invalidating it.
I don’t know what the situation is regarding external lighting. I guess it depends on whether it’s fed from the block’s supply or a different meter. The same with audit fees etc. PPMG cos thrive on confusion and grey areas as it usually benefits them alone.
In short I would suggest NOT accepting dual management as a short-term or cheaper alternative to challenging a counter notice.
Anon2,
I have given further thought to your comments, particularly as they may relate to my site, although I hope that this interesting discussion will enlighten and assist others.
This is a site where, because one block went ahead and got its RTM independently of all other blocks, the remaining blocks are now having to establish separate RTM companies as they go forward to achieve RTM. There have been no counter notices to-date. It looks as though all blocks (a total of 8 of varying sizes) will eventually go RTM at which point we can comblibe all the separate RTM companies into one for the whole of the site.
Our situation was made more complicated in that we were offered a Right of First Refusal 12 months ago, just as we were getting the RTMs off the ground. Interestingly the site was divided into 4 distinct and separate sections for this RFR as the leasehold apartments are set amongst freehold houses (none of which pay towards site maintenance although I am informed that their deeds contain covenants regarding parking of certain vehicles on the roads; these roads have been adopted by the local council and likewise the drainage / sewerage by the appropriate Water company)
The charges for the maintenance of the site do not include any insurance costs which I find interesting as, although the grounds and garden area are private, they are open (via the council adopted roads and pavement (with Council maintained street lights) to all and sundry; therefore a member of the public could injure themselves and would presumably be able to claim against the owner of the land?
The charges for the so-called management and maintenance of the grounds /gardens / access and parking areas are blatant day-light robbery with hald of what we pay being the management fee and a large proportion coming back to us as annual surplus.
You said you would pass details of your Counsel to admin – please do – and I will contact them.
I cannot and will not let this matter lie.
A REQUEST TO ANON2 / ADMIN
I refer to your post of 3 April (12.23pm)in which you stated that you had sent ADMIN the contact details for the Chambers that you used / direct access barrister details.
I would be most grateful if you could resend via ADMIN as I am most interested in pursuing this issue of the development site being “split” into 2 for management purposes.
Admin – I appreciate fully that you are very busy.
Many thanks.
Petya or anyone else the best way is too ignore as one should do
with other attention seekers. One does not waste time with time
wasters.
Admin too rude enteries in future please just delet them as they
are not serving the purpose and causing offence to some contributors