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Fight this charge
• ISLINGTON Leaseholders Action Group is making an application to the London Leaseholder Valuation Tribunal for a proposed charge by Homes for Islington (HfI) to be declared illegal.
This is the estimated annual charge of £20 to cover the funding of a leaseholders’ association. Our case is simple: it is illegal because there is no provision in our leases for such a charge. That assertion is supported by a solicitor with the Leasehold Advisory Service, acknowledged to be experts on landlord/tenant law. It is also supported by a barrister specialising in the housing area.
Homes for Islington’s case for imposing a leaseholders’ association charge rests, we understand, on two planks. First, that it is enabled to make the charge because of a ballot carried out among leaseholders. Second, that it is further enabled to make the charge because of its intention to enter into a service level agreement with the new leaseholders’ association.
The professional opinion we have obtained suggests these are irrelevant considerations. Our leases have to be read “restrictively”, in legal jargon. They say – and we have looked at 14 variants – what they say. They cannot be creatively interpreted.
Homes for Islington (HfI) has included the £20 levy on its estimated service charge to leaseholders for 2007-8. We would urge the 85 per cent of Islington’s 11,000 leaseholders who expressed opposition to the move, either by refusing to vote or by actively opposing the move, to ignore HfI’s demand.
As for those who voted in favour, we would urge you to reconsider your position. What quality of legal advice do you expect to receive from a proposed service where the principals do not appear to have a basic understanding of the lease, the basis of their legal relationship with the landlord?
Even more cautionary, what confidence can you have in a proposed service where the principals running a similar service for tenants were condemned this year by the government’s public spending watchdog for having “no outputs”. The Audit Commission said in effect these individuals couldn’t run a whelk stall.
Don’t be a whelk.
MICHAEL READ
Islington Leaseholder Action Group
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