Success, Victory, Freedom
Deck Close, Camberwell

Here is an overview of the background of what we have had to go through with for our property to purchase the freehold and then to manage it. Our Freeholder was Holdings and Management (Solitaire), their freehold agent was Estates and Management their managing agent was Solitaire Property Management (now OM Property).

Our freehold process was marred by time wasting, delays and little co-operation to achieve a fair price, but then why would Holding and Management want to, as they don’t want to sell and are being forced to sell. The biggest issues we had during the freehold purchase process was that their agent responded just with in the last legal time frame available and with just the bare minimum of what they were legally obliged to provide or do. Legal time frames and deadlines will at least ensure that the process goes forward rather than come to a complete halt. However you must be on the ball to ensure that you meet all criteria and most importantly the timeframe deadlines. There is legislation in place to ensure that your purchase of the freehold will happen you just have to be aware of what you have to do next. The other issue is that as the freeholder is not liable for any costs you will need to be prepared to stump up ££ to see it through.

Negotiations from our perspective were pointless (as we had attempted for a year to get a fair price without any avail – in the meantime delaying further our goal of managing our own homes and in turn paying OM further fees and service charges), avenue and only when we issued our formal notice did we start getting better responses (legal time frames). I would recommend to lodge your right to buy the freehold and then you have 6 months to come to an agreed price or go to tribunal. Don’t bother to try any negotiation outside of invoking your legal right.

The biggest issue was the valuation of the freehold that E&M were claiming to be fair. Given that this is the only way to delay the selling the freehold (it cant be stopped), it is obvious that this will be utilised to prevent a sale by wasting your time to hope for a miss of a required time frame thus causing the process to begin again and delay for as long as possible the sale. You as the leaseholder wishing to buy must constantly meet the legal time frames to force E&M to sell, if you miss one, the whole process starts over again so you must be prepared to go to the next stage of enforcing them to sell. Ensure that you are aware of the timeframes and that your solicitor is as well. The freeholder is also not required to divulge their supporting documentation/formulas as to how they have calculated their freehold price. This certainly doesn’t allow for a fair price nor a fair negotiation. You will just need to push on. What we did notice is that with each legal step we took to get closer to a tribunal hearing their priced dropped by enough that made the taking of the next legal step financially worthwhile. So much so that by the time we got to the tribunal and a fair price determined by the tribunal that was about 30% below the initial offering from E&M. It certainly made sense to proceed down this path. We really needed to keep forcing their hand. They are not interested in fairness to you only a premium to themselves (sounds familiar).

During the freehold negotiations the freeholder puts together the legal documentation for the transfer to be executed. The freeholder there fore has the option to insert any restrictions and clauses it feels best serves its interest. Fortunately for us we had none inserted and we made this perfectly clear to the freeholder at the earliest point possible. If they did wish to retain any involvement in our property this to would be able to be debated at the tribunal to have this removed so you do not have to accept their requests. Our second attempt to proceed with the transfer was missed as the freeholder did not have the completion reports for handover. We had to threaten them with a court action to force the sale of the freehold and gave them the last date possible. After a tribunal judgement has been passed there are 2 months available to complete. If the completion does not happen in those two months there is a two month window whereby either completion happens or a court appearance is required to force the sale and obtain an extension of time. Failure to complete within the four month period will result in the forfeiture of the tribunal decision and you will then have to go back to a ‘negotiated’ settlement with the freeholder. You can see it stacked up against you and it is imperative that you are aware of these time frames.

Despite not having any restrictions in the freehold title or the lease, when the freehold transfer date arrived Peverel declined to cease management of our property. It seems that a different section of the Peverel legal department had a different view on what we were able to do and did not believe that they could be simply have their services terminated to that effect in contradiction to the other section. They then claimed that they were a party to our lease (a three party lease), despite that they are not mentioned in the lease, and the only effective parties in the lease are the freeholder and the leaseholder. Peverel then switched hats from the management company to the former freeholder indicating that they were still involved in our property. At this point they clearly failed to actually check what rights and restrictions they had nor even speak to the person who oversaw the transfer which was grossly incompetent. We had a choice of buying the freehold without the completion reports or forfeiting the freehold and beginning again (along with incurring all the costs again). We went ahead with the purchase which in the very least changed the authority and dynamics of the dispute to favour us and would give us additional options. Don’t be afraid to take the leap even if OM are refusing to play ball.

We wrote to our local MP Simon Hughes for assistance to help us through this and hopefully get the issues resolved. Peverel responded with their usual spin doctoring in an attempt to make it seem like it was our fault for the issues and not theirs. I feel it is very important that during these issues that you request your local MP involvement. If you want things to change then it will need to happen via your MP so you should keep them involved with all disputes with Peverel.

At this point in time the freehold was transferred and registered in our names.

The nature of this dispute OM raised, was a dispute between a property management agent and the freeholder of the property. There was no legal right for Peverel to raise this dispute as the previous freeholder gave us all the rights and obligations that they had without any restrictions. Solitaire / OM / Peverel decided not to investigate or query what legal rights the freeholder transferred over to us and instead I can only assume that as they are an affiliated company and that the freehold transfer was handled by another team in the Peverel legal department, that they did put in the necessary restrictions into our freehold title (of which they have claimed) then all I can say is that their incompetence has worked in our favour for there has not been any insertion of the type of restriction of which would have provided OM property the right to continue to manage our property beyond the freehold transfer date.

Despite numerous communications between our solicitors and theirs Peverel refused to accept any common sense and remained as stubborn as ever. A solicitors suggested that if Peverel continue to refuse to stop management over the ridiculous claim to be a party to our lease as a management company then to further prove the point that they are not and also limit our exposure to them we applied to surrender our leases and re-register new leases. The benefit is that at the point of registration the vexatious claims they were making were confined to history as Peverel will then need to argue their place in the new lease. The flip side of the coin is that in undertaking the operation of the law we also proved without a doubt that Peverel had no remaining involvement in our lease, and certainly not a party as a party to a lease could not be removed without their consent. Clearly they were only a managing agent appointed by the freeholder. Sounds simple, seems clear, but Peverel cant make life unnecessarily difficult if they want to, and they did.

Our solicitors had to ask Peverel to provide evidence of their claims to be a party to the lease of which they provided the old lease and referred to an imaginary 3rd party.

So let us convey some basic facts. For some reason Solitaire are claiming that they are a party to the lease. This is wrong for these reasons:

• Holdings and Management was a party to the lease not Peverel
• Holdings is named as ‘the company’ in the lease and it is this reference to a company as to why they are claiming that they are still a party to the lease.
• In each of our leases it states that the company shall included all its successors in title. We have purchased the freehold. We are the successors of the title. The land registry have registered as the successors to the title and the names on the freehold.
• The covenants in the lease allow the company (which is us now as its legal successor as mentioned in all the leases) to take on the legal obligations from Holdings which includes the maintenance of the block. This is also the power to appoint and remove who manages our property.

Our solicitor again put this out to Peverel that 1. the lease you refer to is non enforcing so please explain in the new lease where you have this authority, and 2. the reasons explained above as well as the proof of the surrender and re-registering. They will also now have to argue against why the land registry was wrong in its decision to accept the surrendering and re-registration. We also had to threaten OM with an injunction preventing them undertaking any management tasks to our property until such a time that a court determination is made on their status of the leases. This at least got them to start *finally* investigating and attempting to provide some evidence and legal support for their claims.

Be certainly aware of this. Peverel gave us an insight which should be a warning light for anyone else over what they expected to happen during a freehold transfer. They wrote to the land registry enquiring as to how a lease was surrendered without their knowledge as they were a party to the lease. Simply put Peverel expected a restriction to be put in place on the freehold title allowing them to continue to be involved in your property after you take ownership of the freehold. If this was inserted then they would have been advised that their leases were to be surrendered and could have objected and delayed the process. Without this insertion on the freehold title the operation of the law was able to work independently and efficiently. It was only through the incompetence of Peverel that saved us from having this inserted. They clearly wanted and would have used it against you if it was there. You do have the option upon going to the tribunal to also argue your case as to why their shouldn’t be any further involvement in your property. If they had this restriction they could have made life extremely difficult for you to create a new lease for yourself (such as if you wanted to give yourself virtual freehold by authorising a 999 year lease). It would also work in their favour should such a restriction be in place in the case of a dispute about the contents of the lease. There is a way to cut the last head off the multi headed dragon, so you don’t have to accept what they are putting forward. Don’t let them keep any involvement no matter how small as it will be used against you. Do remember that!

A further insight is that the Peverel legal team through who OM had deal with us was lead by ‘MK’.

MK in thinking that they had such a restriction which would have supported their stance and actually provide a level of legal support for them. Peverel wrote to the land registry (on behalf of their client Holdings and Management – not as OM – 7 months after raising the dispute) asking how the old titles were closed without them having notice. This was sent by the same person representing the management company and now the freeholder. It seems that one legal person is able to flip between the representative of the Property management company and then the freeholder without any issues, seems anti competitive and very collusive for an abuse of power. The answer from the land registry was, that there was no restriction requiring any permission or consent from Holdings and Management. All the rights, and the core issue of the dispute, go back to the transfer of the freehold title and the rights that are bestowed upon the vested interested parties. If Holding and Management did indeed want to continue to manager our property as a management company then they should have had registered a restriction in the title which would have been added as part of the transfer process, but they did not and it was this confirmation from the land registry that led to their conceding, they were clearly taken aback by this. This is clearly highlighted that despite everything that they had said in numerous letters to us that all it took for their “investigation” was one letter to the land registry to confirm their stance and the realisation of what has been stated above.

This finally led to them conceding and stopping management as they could not stop and not provide any evidence to support their claims. I personally felt that it was not so much about what they could prove but what they could stop/disrupt to further their cause. Although even in conceding they still somehow managed our block for an additional month after conceding and 8 months after their termination date, let alone many months after the lease surrendering. They still attempted to coerce monies out of us that they were not entitled to, and even went to the lengths of issuing our new yearly contracts for our property and requesting that we pay them for doing so.

The next issue is getting your money back from Peverel. Overcharging refunds, reserve funds, the works. The truth it seems is that there is no legal requirement or even a moral obligation to provide this money or even account for it in a completion report let alone any other information regarding the financial and maintenance of your block. If you want it you will have to go back to the solicitors to get it back. The result was after the conceding an initial completion report was presented saying that they had ‘handed over management’ to us in April 2011 of which we had to restate that their services were terminated back in August 2010. Each communication we outlined to Peverel seemed to be ignored and only achieved responses through persistent chasing. In their responses erroneous amounts were stated each one of a differing time period (even a management fee required to be paid from the time the block was lost – from the time the block was lost? How can we be liable for management fees after their services?).

We had 4 differing amounts from Peverel over what was owed. They also kept attempting to infer that they have voluntarily handed over the management of the block – on a variety of differing dates! After 2 months of no response and chasing requests from our solicitor, the only option remaining to bring this to a conclusion and obtain our monies was to issue a ‘statutory demand’ with the threat of winding up the company if they do not settle the debt. Seems ridiculous that this is the only option but what else can you do when a company refused to respond to your communication.

This action got a response (Peverel said that it was premature to have issued a statutory demand despite not having responded for some 2 months to our previous request – quite laughable), and also acknowledgement of a ‘credit’ being due to us (not us owing them unlike their previous correspondence of which we had refuted!). Eventually common sense prevailed some 10 months after their termination and we had obtained a finalised report and just before our 12 month anniversary of our second attempt to complete we had received our monies via our solicitor. The financial accounts were finally settled. It is important to note that all the monies should be passed to the solicitor. As the monies had not been received by ourselves it meant that the statutory demand was still unfilled for any part payment made and a winding up order could still be issued at any time for any remaining disputed monies. Peverel may try to lower the outstanding amount in dispute to be less than the £750 required for a statutory demand to be valid so be aware of this.

Still the issues are not entirely finished there as much as we would like them to be. OM have still not provided the management reports for the block (safety / insurance / maintenance assessment, etc…) So at the time of writing our issues with Peverel are still ongoing. Its only been a year, and I am sure that they would have hoped that at any time we would have just rolled over and either accepted their version of the truth or just walked away. How ever we are not the sort of people to accept an injustice or be bullied around.

At any time and there were many, many, many opportunities, Peverel and OM Property could have ended this amicably, they could have entered into a discussion to resolve in a short period of time, anything that would indicate that they were actively trying to be a responsible member of society. Unfortunately however, they did not as it is not in their interests to be accommodating. For a multi million pound company with the resources that Peverel have it is probably quite profitable to be so bullying, disrupting and irresponsible.

In the end it was Peverel who had inadequate legal advice from their own legal department.

To give you an idea on some the things encountered here is a list:

• Despite having nearly 3 months to provide any concerns about the freehold purchase and their termination of services OM responded in the week before and advised 2 days before the freehold transfer that they were not going to stop managing the property.
• Absurd interpretation of the lease for the inclusion of an imaginary 3rd party in the lease
• Continual harassment of overdue notices and incurring of administration fees despite none of them being valid
• Constant refusal to accept common sense
• No update of OM’s records indicating that there was a new freeholder (their records showed that they were managing on the authority of the previous freeholder)
• The old lease was still referring to the old land registry land title for the freeholder instead of the new freehold title (in effect ignoring the freehold transfer) which some how gave them additional authority to provide estate maintenance. When the freehold transfer took place our block was issued with a new freehold title, this is the one that they should have been referring to.
• Debt collection threats, then a notice from a debt collection company including writing to the mortgage provider. Easily dismissed by informing the debt collection company that the managing agent is in dispute with the freeholder over their role
• Spin doctoring to infer that we were wrong and they were doing the utmost to assist us in resolving our inadequate legal advice
• In adequate advice that freeholder must undertake RTM and Peverel will happily undertake the process to ensure management transition to us – for a fee. Not required as we are the freeholder not a leaseholder.
• Notices that failure to pay service charges would result in the forfeiture of the lease to the freeholder (such a hollow threat as we are the freeholder!)
• Tendering out management services for our property (and the companies that accepted the contracts refused to deal with the freeholder, they are answerable only to the managing agent), much distress
• Request for payment of estate fees despite their never having been made or requested in any previous year
• Switching of legal hats from managing agent to former freeholder and back again (collusion)
• Having Estates & Management attempt to rewrite history to support their claims despite the obvious contradiction to E&M correspondence previously provided to us
• As they had no grounds to dispute their termination they did not undertake any court determination to support their claims, this meant that could proceed in a business as usual approach in ambiguity
• Failure to respond within requested time frames

Things that we did that made our life easier during this ordeal:

• Speaking with a solicitor
• Requesting assistance from our MP (Simon Hughes) to get him involved to help obtain a resolution. His involvement got responses from Peverel and also highlighted on going issues
• Ensured that there was nothing remaining (in any way) in the freehold title that would allow for any further involvement with our property
• Never speaking of our intention to surrender our leases with them as they could potentially cause problems to delay (only delay not stop as they have no rights or authority to stop)
• Surrendered our leases and re-registered new ones as soon as possible (fait accompli for any further disagreement beyond the registration of the new lease date provides an absolute clean break with the past)
• We made clear throughout the dispute that all legal costs will be reclaimed and they were
• Threat of imposing an injunction against OM and prevent them from performing any management until such a time that a court determination has been made on their claims
• Statutory demand notice for outstanding funds including legal fees (must be larger than £750 to be issued, the inclusion of the legal fees means that they cannot argue them separately and are now linked to the statutory demand being fulfilled) of which they have 21 days to respond or face a winding up order, resulted in getting communication again from them
• The threat of issuing the winding up order means that they would have to argue in court of which the promptly conceded and paid out all the remaining monies and monies for the legal costs incurred

Don’t be afraid to push them to go to court. You must be prepared to defend yourself. When they are clearly wrong the last thing that they want is to attend court. In every opportunity that they had to go to court for us they conceded rather than try to argue an incredibly weak position in a court of law. The worst thing for Peverel would be to have a court determination and try to argue in court over their ridiculous claims. As you can read from the above, that its purely due to the threat of arguing in court that they conceded time and time again and that we got where we are.

Currently we have had victory after victory (in no part due to our solicitor’s), and now that we own the freehold, we control our block and our homes, we removed a belligerent property managing agent (and that is all they are and ever were an agent in service of the freeholder), not accepting their inadequate legal advice, and we all take absolute enjoyment in managing our own properties and our homes. Despite of everything we were put through, all of their conceding, their acceptance of the termination date but still not a single unreserved apology has been offered over their litany of mistakes. At least a high street company would offer you an apology if they were wrong, so it is quite clear as to which end of the street Peverel resides.

So once this is all put to rest you would expect that the birds chirp a little more melodic, that the sky is a little more blue and the sun shines a little more clearer. Well it is true

The greatest benefit is intangible. There are no more disputes about costs, no more inaccurate bills, no more ever increasing bills and no more surprises at the end of the financial year. It is the sense of knowing that when there is an issue it will be dealt with quickly, efficiently and cost effectively. No more calling up or emailing and waiting 14 or 21 or 28 days for a response. The stress is gone over being controlled by someone who does not have your own vested interest in your home let alone any accountability to you. Our property is only a small block (3 apartments), we have since taken ownership of it been able to take the opportunity to do some repair work but overall our property is not that old and hasn’t required too much rework. No admin fees required to be paid for approval and by utilising the free market rather than a preferred provider we have obtained value for money and substantial cost savings.

Cost wise (lets face it the bottom line is incredibly important these days) is that our block yearly charge went from about £3600 down to just under a £800. Once you get a competitive insurance quote (50% reduction), do a little bit of gardening work yourself (£200 for equipment), freedom from management fees, no bank fees, no excessive repairs costs you really start to make a saving. Quite amazing the savings that we have gained by their removal. The first thing we were able to do was some repair work without fear of excessive charges which were overdue and. We have had replacement of windows/doors with double glazing saving £000′s doing it our selves than through them, let alone not having to pay any authorisation costs to have it done. Roof repair, block insulation, loft conversion, gate repair (to fix the repair work they had done previously) and garden work (which was always a minimal and in my opinion inadequate for the charge). The savings in the first year was more than enough to covered our legal cost of removing them (of which Peverel paid for in realising their legal stance was wobblier than a bowl of Jelly) so its all into savings now.

Each of the new freeholders have been delighted with finally bringing so many of the horrible chapters of involvement with Peverel and OM to a complete end, and to finally have control over our own homes.

Success, Victory, Freedom! I am Spartacus all stand and say it with me