Landlord demanding unreasonable service charges + deficit of previous years

[Razberry]

Hi all,

I need some advice.

We live in a block of flats and our service charges have consistently gone up the past few years (and the service has been going down). We have had 3 service management companies in the past 3 years.

Now, our landlord is requesting a huge sum for a past financial year deficit. In that particular year, we had a horrible service management company who either significantly underbudgeted expenses or did God knows what with our service charge funds. We have not yet seen any invoices.

Does anyone have experience with something similar, can share what they did in that situation and point me to some resources?

Thank you!

I’d speak to the leasehold advisory service as there are definite rules around service charge and what they can ask for.

You can make a Section 22 request to review the invoices, you can also request an external audit of the accounts. Were they audited or just certified? As advised above, the Leasehold Advisory Service are a good resource.

Unfortunately if they significantly under budgeted then under the terms of the lease they should recover those costs from leaseholders; it is for maintenance of the building after all. The cost of owning a flat is likely to go up in the coming years due to the increase in requirements for fire safety; not a bad thing but there are lots of retrospective works required in many cases, which costs money.

Your comment about having three agents in three years is concerning. It's not possible for a building to be managed well while changing agents all the time. You don't develop any knowledge of the historic issues, long term problems can't be sorted and debt collection suffers. Good agents are not cheap but they are worth the money. Is there a leaseholders ManCo at the block or do you have a separate freeholder calling the shots?

Would you consider forming a leaseholders' management co to take the right to manage away from the landlord see here for a short summary. You could then appoint your own managing agents.

And yes service charges are highly restricted in law - demand information until you have the full story on the arrears then if necessary take legal advice as a group.