Can my HA charge me for this?

[EmpressSoleil]

I live in an HA property in a semi private street. Maybe 15-20% of the properties are HA owned. The rest private. My rent went up by £10 pw, ok not wholly unexpected. But they also now want to charge me £25 pw for "tree work". I queried this as I've lived here 15 years and this has never come up before. There are no trees anywhere on my property. There are trees in the street.

They wrote back saying the charge is for work they do to the trees (not that I've ever seen) and is "for the benefit of all the residents in the street"!! How can that be right? So a handful of us have to pay over £100 a month for the benefit of "everyone". Has anyone heard of anything like this? And how do i fight it? I dont think it's right and I simply do not have another 100+ per month available. TIA

Ate you sure you're not misreading it and it's £25 per year or per month!

Not a lawyer or such..

I don’t know what a “semi-private” street is but surely such costs should be paid by the people who “own” the houses that is shared appropriately by the HA as they own some of the houses (from the profits they get from renting) and the private home owners, not imposed as additional charges on the people renting.

You pay to rent a property, not to pay for the maintenance costs of the street!
Check the contract you signed with them.

Also is the work being carried out by professional contractors, fully invoiced or by someone’s dodgy “uncle” who gets paid cash in hand. Could be a scam!

It won't be £25 per week. Check it again, I'll bet it's a yearly charge.

Definitely per week. £20 tree work £5 admin fee. By semi private I just meant some houses are HA owned (a small percentage) the majority privately owned. As opposed to me say living on an HA estate where they might all be HA owned.

Can you check whether the other renters or indeed private home owners are being charged this?

I would write back saying you consider the charge to be unfair as you only rent and there is no mention of a charge for tree maintenance in the contract you signed. Why should the private homeowners, who should pay their fair share, get the work done for free while renters have to pay?

If they insist then you want clarification on how many residents are contributing to this payment. Want confirmation that the work is being carried out by professional contractors who have the appropriate insurance if things go wrong. Also want to know who is managing this work and was it put out to competitive tender?

No way is it 25 a week

I've double checked the letter and it definitely says per week, broken down like this:
Rent 179 p/w
Fire protection 3.50 p/w
Tree work 20 p/w
Administration 4.5 pw
Total weekly charge 207 p/w
My pre April rent was 169 with no service charges at all so an increase of 38 pw

So a Housing Association Service Charge? For maintenance and ground work etc? I think the increase on these is capped at 7% a month, so if you were £0 before the maximum they can start charging surely has to be £7 a month, they can then increase by 70p in a years time and so on. I don’t think they can set it at £100 to start off with.

Oh and also this is the amount they're charging me as currently I am 80 in arrears in my online account as I am only paying the rent, while fighting the rest.

Wow The culture towards SH tenants has got so bad that people now assume tenants cant read. OP the only way to stop this is probably to put up a screenshot of the letter redacting your name obvs.

Because the default setting towards SH tenants is disbelief

I think its an admin error. Have they confirmed it's actually 25 per week? If it is, that's ridiculous and no way would I agree to pay it. Some HA are unscrupulous but that takes the piss

It sounds more like a management fee
I live in an apartment and mine is fucking ridiculous £1800 a year

My HO got very nervous when i pointed out that the cowboy electricians doing the electric checks need liability insurance.

From Twitter.

That day will come...@AfrikaHotWell, McIntyre compliance cowboy electrician has just left me without hot water n heating all weekend all they can send is ANOTHER subcontractor that deals with FIRE ALARMS to say "yh he messed it up" so YOU don't have a wknd emergency electrician, Gd job I'm not a pensioner!!!

That day will come...@AfrikaHot
·
Apr 16Are you going to compensate my spoiled freezer contents?

And thats just one example. There are many more in my tenant FB group.

I thought it was an admin error and they have just been vague in their response with their line of it being for the benefit of all. I have now submitted a complaint online. Not sure what else to do right now.

Do you live in a house OP?

Housing associations are notorious for messing up service charges. Often junior staff code invoices to the wrong estate. I'd would query this - though expect it to take ages - possibly escalate.

I'm in a converted house, so a 2bed flat downstairs and then I'm on 1st and 2nd floor. I did ask the downstairs neighbour if she'd had this letter but she says she hasn't.

Do you know any of the other neighbours enough to ask them of they've had letters?

Id write back and request a detailed explanation of which tree work along with breakdown of costs and who is carrying out the work regularly, and can they explain if it is for the enjoyment of the residential street why the private householders are not being requested to pay for this tree work, along with some other HA residents

Put a date of 21 working days for a reply and then after 21 days contact your MP

Absolutely fight this! I honestly don't know how they would justify charges of that level to do work for trees that aren't even on your property. And they would have to justify it with a detailed breakdown. As someone has said, write to your MP if needed.
Who is your HA?

I live in a street with a mix of HA and bought properties. Every property is charged for garden maintenance, owners and renters. We get billed at the end of the financial year for the previous years maintenance and I always ask for a breakdown of exactly what I'm being charged for as more often than not they charge us for bin area cleaning and we don't have a communal bin area.
I think they rely on people not checking or querying anything.

Definitely stand your ground. £25 PW seems awfully high and any maintenance should surely be paid by all properties not just renters.

Are the trees on the actual street? And is the street adopted/owned by the local authority?

The housing association is Clarion. I have sent an email to the council asking if they can clarify whether they have responsibility for the trees. I decided to email rather than call as if it does come under the council I have something written to forward on to the HA. I will see if I can speak to some neighbours over the next couple of days. Asking for a detailed breakdown is a good idea as the response I received was very generic and indicated they hadn’t looked into it at all.

I just find it quite stressful as I can see the “rent arrears” racking up but I can’t afford to pay and try and claim back later, nor would I trust them to pay it back! They had to pay me compensation once and they read my rent account wrong. I was £300 in credit and they held back 300 as rent arrears! It took 12 months to get that money back.

They’ve also logged it wrongly on my online account. They have put £192 (should be 179) for rent and £15 service charges. Which makes the 207 they’re asking for but makes it look like I am in arrears on the rent as well as the service charges.