You are probably looking at this because you are up in arms about how you have been treated by a landowning management company. Common experiences include being threatened with court action if you with hold payment because you are not satisfied with the level of service or the fees being charged. What is yours?
My problems are with the developers of Newcastle Great Park, who own the land and have set up management companies for various areas of the development (it is big – it will be 4500 homes when completed). They gave no indication that they were the management company in the conveyancing documents, and did say householders would be voting members of the company which they later did not implement. So deception from the outset.
Now they won’t say what, if any systems and processes are in place to correctly identify costs for the residents as opposed to their own costs in preparing the land. Freeholders are supposed to pay for maintenance, not preparation. They won’t say how they deal with the obvious conflict of interests. They have incurred unnecessary costs by using their accountants for clerical work and are trying to charge us for areas which are obviously unfinished. There is more, but these are the main issues. I’m waiting for a solicitors letter as I am with holding a portion of the charge until the questions are answered.
I agree with everything that Cathy has mentioned about Newcastle great park.
The Great park management company are threatening to take me to court if I don’t pay the service charge by the end of the month. Im really not happy paying for work that hasnt been carried out. Ive written them a mail on there website with no reply. Have GPMC provided a scope of work that they aim to complete because I’ve lived here 3 years now and apart from very occasionally cutting the grass nothing else has been done.
I’m a freeholder who was only informed about the management fee by the estate agent when I was too far along the buying process to back out in 2014. Every one of the 44 freeholders in my road must pay for the maintenance and ‘improvement’ of a small strip of land adjacent to our houses since on buying a property you automatically become a ‘member’ of the ‘company’ that owns said strip of land. Management company HML Chilton collect a bi-annual charge but have also been collecting a reserve charge of an additional 20% approximatelt since I moved in.
Until this month they claimed they were acting on the instructions of the 3 directors (at least one of whom and possibly all three of whom are owners but not residents) in my road and have repeatedly insisted that the directors make a budget in the interest of the ‘members’. I have repeatedly pointed out that the directors have never contacted me to ascertain what my interests are and HML Chilton now say that they cannot comment on any previous communication the directors may or may not have had with me. They have also failed to provide me with invoices for work that I and other residents are not convinced has been done (let alone was needed) and gave me instead a jargon filled response.
They continually avoid answering simple questions by providing the same answer they’ve already given, or ignoring the question or saying the opposite. In February this year they told me the reserve charge would not need to be collected in June. When it was requested in June after all, they told me that this was a mistake, another example of their saying one thing on one day and another thing another time. This is no basis to conduct a relationship on. They also insist that calling General Meetings is down to the directors although they sent me a document recently stating that organising General Meetings was the duty of the Company Secretary who is…HML Chilton.
Contradictory, unhelpful, obfuscatory, delayed responses, jargon – basically, they’ll they’ve done it all to avoid. Oh and I haven’t had a statement of accounts for any year ending since June 2014.
The Ombudsman Services have now agreed that I may have a case so I have written a letter and am waiting to copy all the relevant documents to send off to them.
Hi
I just got an invoice for this year. I am not planning to pay £330 for cutting grass once a year!. We do need to form an alliance and possibly contact local MP abiut these rip off charges.