Upstairs flat leaking for the last 3 weeks!! getting worse. No one in there. Management agency refusing to help. What now.

[leoleo]

My friends property.
Upstairs flat has been leaking a little bit but continus. The management company are refusing to do anything.
Leaking has got much much worse.
Management co told her to call the fire brigade.
What can we do?
The police have said they cannot do anything unless someone was in there dead or something..

who owns the flat? Is it empty? Someone must own it and the Management Company should know. I can see that it is not the MA's job to fix leaks within a flat (they are usually just responsible for the communal bits) but it does sound as though they are being very unhelpful. Have they passed the message on to the flat owner/ tenant?? That is the least they can do. My advice is to make yourself a total nuisance until they get their finger out. Ring them alot, perhaps pop to their offices unannounced (if you can). Get a named person and pester them and request updates.. be nice but firm. The owner of the flat is responsible for fixing internal leaks in his own flat. Take pictures of the damage that is being done in your flat. Document any phonecalls. emails, visits.. Personally I wouldn't waste tax payers money on calling out the fire brigade unless it was a flood but leaks are very annoying. Who maintains the building insurance? Is it the managing agent? If yes, I would point this out to them as any insurer will nto be pleased if a claim becomes higher because of inaction. HTH!

MA are refusing to give details of owner due to data prodection.
Good thinking with the building insurance though. I agree with the fire brigade - not really what they are there for.
Thank you

say to MA that you do not want to contact the owner , you want THEM to do it. It's only a phone call/ email afterall. My understanding is that MA's can carry out repairs if owner does not respond in a timely fashion.. but it could be the owner does not even know! Has your friend spoken to the neighbours/ tenants? I would also point out to MA that the leak may well be damadging the owners flat and if I was the owner I would be pretty pissed off if no one at the MA told there was a problem. If the owner does know but is just not doing anything about it, this is more tricky and legal action may be needed.

You could also try environemental health at your council as the leak is classified as a nusiance and they should be able to put pressure on the owner to have it fixed within a set time. (and find out who the owner is)

We had a similar experience with flat above us resulting in the ceiling collapsing almost on top of me and baby DD1. We kept on reporting it to the landlord who did nothing, got Environmental health involved to document it and issue a legal notice to fix it and then sued him and won

Take lots of pictures and keep a diary of when the leaks are happening. Hope you manage to get it sorted soon.

Environmental health if I remember rightly told my friend they couldn't help.

Get the owner's name from the land registry website.

Well, they helped us... so maybe it has to come from you as you're the one who's making the complaint???? Just a thought and maybe worth trying?

Plus, we were on good terms with the tenants upstairs too and they were mortified that we were experiencing ongoing leaks from their flat when their LL refused to rectify the problem.

Will try environmental health again - maybe they are different in different areas? - you know what it is like depends who you get mostly with organisations.
Will look at land registary. Thank you everyone. Everything thing helps