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Politicians keep our worries over bills at arms’ length
• DOUG Goldring, from Homes for Islington (HfI), claims leaseholders should not be concerned about losing their right to challenge their major works bills at a Leasehold Valuation Tribunal (LVT) because “where leaseholders genuinely do have issues about the cost, quality or ‘reasonableness’ of major work charges, we are committed to resolving these” (Charges can be challenged even if you have pay plan, September 18).
If you write to HfI expressing your concerns about your think-of-a-number major works bill, you’ll be lucky to get a reply at all. You’ll be luckier still if it’s intelligible, and if you pursue the matter, they will write to you and say, in effect: “Well, go to an LVT then, love, if you don’t like it.”
Similarly, at the major works bill “consultation” I attended, comments that HfI found unhelpful were met with either shouting or sighing exasperation; that is to say, they were dismissed. There has been no consultation and the bills are “genuinely” unreasonable. As almost no one will be able to pay their bill outright, HfI is now effectively and quite deliberately blocking any opposition.
It is not HfI that should be responding to leaseholders’ concerns. It is our elected representatives, most particularly council leader Terry Stacy. Yes, dear councillors, we see through the old arms’-length ruse.
Fiona Rintoul
Highbury New Park, N5
• THE Landlord and Tenants Act (1985) 27A (4), which restricts LVT adjudication, must surely have been explained in detail to HfI and Islington Council by its legal advisors, prior to initiation of the payment plan. But they offered leaseholders this restrictive facility without at any stage indicating the legal consequences of their actions.
To then suggest that leaseholders could approach the very organisation which presented the bills in the first place for consideration, rather than contest them before the appropriate independent authority, is somewhat whimsical.
To use terms such as “genuine issues”, “quality” and “reasonableness”, in the same sentence as major works, simply smacks of Alice in Wonderland, since there can be no doubt that in the eyes of leaseholders these particular terms do not and never have featured in leaseholder issues.
He states that bills do not increase, but are effectively capped by the agreed maximum price (AMP). This statement, while basically correct, does not attempt to explain that the AMP is restricted solely to the works as outlined within the original contract, and that any works subsequently “identified” by the contractors or HfI will be rechargeable to leaseholders under supplementary s20 notices.
Leaseholders signing payment plans should be aware that deferred arrangements may cause difficulties at a later stage, due to overlapping of cyclic maintenance and major works billing which at present is a seven-year cycle but which could in theory be altered to parallel the five-year cycle of Islington’s Private Finance Initiative contracts.
Instead of offering undemocratic payment terms, the council should urgently address the issues associated with leaseholder billing, by starting where the problems begin – at the initial stages of contract assessment – and resolve these particular areas of contention.
The leaseholders’ problems, due mainly to gross overcharging for sub-standard work, will simply fade away and possibly negate the necessity for what may constitute to most nothing less then a second mortgage.
Dr BS Potter
Chairman, Islington Leaseholders Association
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