Posted by Dave on July 26, 2007, 2:23 pm, in reply to "Re: Response to Charles"

Charles, Sorry - I realise that this horse is long past dead, but further flogging on the plumbing checks: "We only paid planet plumbing the cost to inspect each flat. About £50 per flat. The idea this was part of the service charge and people would take this up for the communal good and the incentive would be that they had already paid for it and that in the long run it would reduce costs." The objection is that this money was paid up front, before takeup of the checks was known. I don't see that this incentivises people well enough to justify paying for checks that are not done. "Asking people nicely to do theirs on their own initiative would not work in reality as a large proportion would not bother" I agree entirely, but if this plan was only going to be effective at 100% takeup, it was always doomed to fail and should never have been attempted. I assume that this is not the case, and the benefit increases as the number of checks increases - which is, again, why it doesn't make sense to me to have paid for every check up front. "[even now there is a large proportion who are not acting responsibly and refuse to have this done]" I'm sorry - this gets trotted out a lot, but I don't think it's anywhere near that simple. Not everyone who hasn't had their check done is "refusing" to get it done, or acting irresponsibly. Planet Plumbing won't work on a Saturday or outside of working hours. Accordingly you're asking each leaseholder who works to either (a) get comfortable with having someone they don't know, who has no responsibility for making good any damage, in their flat while they're at work; or (b) take time off work. I'm glad that there's a significant number of people who are able to do one of those, but I don't think it's fair to say that I'm irresponsible because I'm not happy to allow strangers into my home unsupervised on those terms, and I don't think it's fair to say that I'm refusing to get the check done because I can't get time off work to suit an arbitrary schedule. Now that work is in a quiet period I have been able to arrange some flexibility for next week - I have emailed Andrew at Planet Plumbing to arrange an appointment, and will happily have my check done if he can arrange one during that time. As yet I have had no answer. I'm not holding my breath. "Are you suggesting there are no benefits to trying to reduce the insurance premium and therefore the service charges?" I know that this point has been made before, but I'm not sure that we've ever been given any compelling evidence that we can expect a premium reduction that will outweigh the money we're spending on the checks.

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