While your editorial on leasehold reform (29 January) is right to say that action on ground rents is long overdue, as is the abolition of leasehold altogether, and that the right to manage is a key part of leaseholders taking control of their buildings, it misses a key point: the law around service charges is archaic and deeply unfair.
As it currently stands, unless they manage their buildings themselves, leaseholders have little or no control over what service charges are issued, and while the law says they are entitled to see the accounts, managing agents frequently either fail to supply them or do so in a form that does not, quite literally, add up. Forensic accountants would have a field day. And legally, leaseholders are obliged to pay these charges and then challenge them, usually at the first-tier tribunal, where the precedent is that as long as the charges are necessary, ie the work is necessary, and reasonable, ie the cost is reasonable, they have to be paid. The reason for the charge arising in the first place is irrelevant.
In 2020 the government allowed freeholders to build up to two additional storeys to their existing buildings without planning permission. There are an increasing number of reports of leaseholders in the original buildings experiencing huge problems from the failures of these developments.
They are undertaken by the landlord entirely for their own gain and with no benefit to the existing leaseholders, yet under current law – the reason for the charge arising being irrelevant – the leaseholders are expected to pay for the remediation, which can run into tens of thousands of pounds each. This cannot be right, and needs urgent attention in parliament.
Chris Wallis
Marple, Greater Manchester
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